You know full well Steam's library is not at all comparable to what's available on mobile. There are thousands of quality games on Steam. How many mobile games are out there that are quality crafted experiences, and not just endless grinding to squeeze as much money as possible out of the user?
I recall seeing a handful come out ~10 years ago, like The Room and Monument Valley. These days the best ones to come out are PC/console games that just so happened to get mobile ports like Papers Please or Slay the Spire.
Heh, yeah. The best "Android game" I ever played was the Android port of XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
Mobile games are just amazingly bad. I didn't even like Monument Valley. The art style doesn't do it for me, and there isn't much else that one could like about it.
I remember back in the day there were tons of awesome games for palm pilot. mobile games that seem fun or good always seem to devolve into pay to play to the point I've just given up completely on them.
Even in the early days of the App Store on the iPhone/iPod Touch it seemed like there was so much opportunity for new types of games and experiences that could be made with the new formfactor/input method compared to prior gaming handhelds. Games like Doodlejump and Angry Birds weren't anything revolutionary, but they were at least simple little time killers you could pay a few bucks for and you got a whole experience to slowly make your way through on the train or whatever.
But it seems to model just doesn't work, or at least the cash cow turned out to be virtual casinos/gacha.
Yahtzee Croshaw did a video discussing what went wrong with mobile gaming that I thought was pretty interesting:
Rollercoaster Tycoon has an excellent version of RC2 for tablets (and I suppose phones). There are also plenty of other games on the Play Store that are decent ports from desktop games or even purely mobile.
I've bought a copy of Super Hexagon for Android at some point, and that's still an excellent game. I don't see why you shouldn't be able to play that on desktop as well now that Windows has native Android support.
Then there are games like PUBG mobile that will easily run on cheap laptops with integrated graphics, unlike the full games. Those types of games even come with full controller support.
Sure, the Play Store home pages likes to peddle the stalkerware scamfest that is microtransaction based minigames, but there are actually decent games on the platform.
When it comes to Android apps and games, you get what you pay for. The situation isn't very different on iOS, except that people are more willing to pay for their apps. You don't see a lot of $10 Android games (which are perfectly fine games) featured on the front page because people WANT the free crapware.
If anything, Microsoft preinstalling Candy Crush on Windows should be a signal that the market wants these types of money wasters on their computers, no matter how much techies and "gamers" despise those types of predatory games.
OpenRCT2 still requires the original game files according to the README.
Plus, RCT being RCT, if you have access to the original game you can probably just install and run that. I haven't seen an x86 compatible system yet that doesn't run RCT2, especially with Wine and QEMU providing fast enough Windows/instruction set emulation to play 2D games from that era on just about any device.
Or, you know, you could just pay a dollar or more for an ad free version or even get a Play Pass. Of course, if you enjoy playing ad-ridden, pay-to-win, copy-pasted virtual casinos, right from the convenience of my PC then it's totally on you.
All of the games I own on Android gave me that option. Also, that logic doesn't really make sense because you'll alienate people that don't like ads from even playing your game.
Yeah, it's not a very good proposition right now, but if we have the android platform available for all desktop OS, perhaps companies writing games or other software for the desktop form factor could target android as a universal platform instead of electron. Finally fulfilling Java's promise of write once, run everywhere.
Who knows, maybe we could compile android to web assembly and have android applets on webpages!
You can already do this on PC using the Windows Subsystem for Android. The major issue surrounding WSA was that it was too technical to setup for most PC users so we built an app for our non-technical users to solve this. Right now, Google building a standalone app for only Android games (people use Android apps fairly on par with games on PC) and then insisting on a slow rollout will most likely make the product go nowhere.
Calling this now. This is a likely candidate for the Google graveyard.
Windows 10 (v2004)
Solid state drive (SSD) with 10 GB of available storage space
IntelⓇ UHD Graphics 630 GPU or comparable
4 CPU physical cores (some games require an Intel CPU)
8 GB of RAM
Windows admin account
Hardware virtualization must be turned on"
But really, there's already a wealth of android emulators for Windows.
The purpose of this release, from Google's point of view, is to displace BlueStacks. For as long as I remember, BlueStacks would sell developers all sorts of ecosystem toxic services, like triggering the emulators to download Google Play games to boost download counts.
The automation in bulestack and sorts are pretty great for time saving and farming rewards in Android games. It helps to skip the grinding and let u play the interesting bit. Not sure if google supports that
ASW is actually pretty bad on Win11. I've bypassed and side loaded normal stuff but it doesn't have Google play services so most things fail to properly function. Other than that it runs like a dog on a machine with a 5800x, 64gb ram, 6750x GPU. it's not really ready for prime time.
Does Windows Subsystem allow you to log in with your Google account? That's a big thing here - not just Android compatibility, but the fact that it's part of Google Play Games, so I assume cloud-saved savegames and the like will be working here.
Really love WSA compared to other emulators. Fully integrated into OS - including notifications.
Was looking at some way to get good openstreetmaps app on windows tablet (pretty much all windows mapping apps sucks), and with WSA i can run good old osmand or organicmaps. Needs better way to install APKs, though. And proper settings interface with permissions management and etc.
Last I checked (early this week) you couldn't use WSfA officially with the play store, only a small store and it was useless for me. There were some hacked versions that supposedly worked with the play store but you had to install a .exe from a YouTube video which doesn't seem that safe.
What's sad is that this Android support on Windows Mobile was actually really good. I had a demo device with an experimental build and Android apps were only as sluggish as... well... Android. A Microsoft run by a CEO with more backbone wouldn't have caved and started selling Androids.
> A Microsoft run by a CEO with more backbone wouldn't have caved and started selling Androids
Maybe Microsoft shouldn't have filed an Amicus brief in aupport of API copyrightability (lower court Google v. Oracle) while implementing Androids APIs.
If the Supreme court had ruled the other way, the brief itself would have been Google's first exhibit for willful infringement. Granted, Microsoft filed adopted the opposite view in their Amicus on the appeal to SCOTUS
Are you saying that because Google wont be invested in this and trying to figure out how to make money off it, that will be what kills it in the end? Seems right.
What I’m saying is that the product landscape is already quite mature. The product adds nothing new or spectacular to the landscape. They will struggle with internal motivation to maintain an also-ran product.
What are the current products in this space? I am aware of Bluestacks, I used to use that a while ago. Have not kept up with competition, so this looks like a good starting point for me to get back into it.
I agree, as someone who uses emulators to play mobile games often I don’t see any compelling reason to migrate from my current setup to use this. I’d probably just lose some functionality like the ability to record macros
It looks like they work by patching the WSA installer to get root ?
There's a leap of trust needed, as we'd be putting our google credentials into it, but I guess that's par for the course for what is kind of a jailbreak.
While it's not necessarily a jailbreak (the OS itself isn't the one preventing you from messing with these files) it's very close to injecting Google Play into an Android ROM that doesn't come with it (like custom ROMs, or maybe Chinese import phones).
Google Play isn't just an app you install, you to give it quite a few system level permissions for it to work right. Without root access and a patched system image, Google Play simply can't work right.
Compare it to getting Apple's iPadOS store to work on macOS or iOS. You can't just extract an .ipa and install it like with other apps, you need to modify the surrounding system and drag over some support libraries or the entire thing won't even be able to start. Or try installing Windows 11's file explorer on Windows 10, you'll need the same level of messing about with dependencies and system integration.
One major difference between the unofficial method and the Google method is that there's an API Google uses for remote attestation (SafetyNet) that requires root access to sort-of bypass, but can't be bypassed entirely. If Google's package contains the code to certify the PCs running it, that'd make DRM compatibility possible without hacks upon hacks.
My mental image was closer to a system framework, like adding node.js with npm, assuming that it wouldn't come with the more security restricted parts (NFC access etc) either way.
Yeah it isn't straightforward and you put trust in the community sort of thing. I've forked a previous version of one of the repos that has a GitHub workflow to build it automatically and have gone through that to make sure it's clean. I can make suggestions as to a repo to use but mine is private since they get DMCA notices I believe.
If you go back in the commit history far enough you can find when the actions workflow files were deleted. I used that (and other repos found via search) to set up the auto builds on mine.
I found that just installing the APKs necessary for a Fire 10 HD works (services, frameworks, etc). You can't use the true Google Play Store but Aurora store seems fine. I only tested this on an ARM64 device so perhaps it falls flat on x64 systems.
BlueStacks has recently ramped up the number of ads. It seems like the management know their days are numbered and are seeking to maximise remaining revenues.
I gave this a quick try, and my first impression is that they've whitelisted games above a certain popularity or monetization level.
On my phone, Google Play library shows about 50 games that I've ever installed which are compatible on my phone and available to reinstall. On the PC, the library is showing exactly one available game.
They have 15 game categories and maybe average 10 games per category. Most of these are ones I've seen advertised, am not seeing anything that looks low budget.
Maybe the next update of Android Studio will let you pick "PC" as a supported platform. There's no ".apk" in my Windows file associations, so maybe no way to sideload things?
This is part of why I like nintendo switch so much.
It's a handheld with the good parts of the smartphone gaming UX (portability, instant on/off), and a lot of high quality games (sans in app currency or subscription madness; often ports of PC games).
Yeah, the only games I have on my phone are S.G. Tatham's puzzle collection, a bunch of games I bought on humble bundle, and a Nintendo DS emulator now that my physical DS stopped working.
Slightly off topic, from the FAQs, this is hilarious:
> How is this different from the Google Play Games mobile app?
The Google Play Games mobile app is primarily focused on the instant games experience where you can jump right into casual games. We’ll have more announcements for the mobile app in the near future. Going forward, “Google Play Games” will refer to the PC experience where you can enjoy your favorite Android games.
I wonder if Meta/Apple execs ever secretly thank Google for being so disorganized and make it easy to compete.
On the surface level this seems good. The current Android-on-PC landscape is pretty bleak; your choices boil down to spyware/adware emulators (Mumu, Bluestacks, LDPlayer etc) or Windows Subsystem for Android, which forced me to either use the Amazon Appstore or sideload through the terminal last I tried it.
Looks like my account isn't eligible for the beta yet, presumably it's a slow rollout.
> The current Android-on-PC landscape is pretty bleak; your choices boil down to spyware/adware emulators (Mumu, Bluestacks, LDPlayer etc) or Windows Subsystem for Android,
Not in the linux land. Last time I tried waydroid it worked impressively well.
Waydroid allows one to run Android apps on a standard GNU/Linux distro. Install f-droid on it and be happy. Of course, you won't get google play games but neither will you get ads.
But I can see what google is doing here: release for Android, get the "pc market" for free. In the end it may boost competition on PC, incentivize more multi-platform games and may increase android share among gamers.
Indeed, then there's the huge amountmicropayment freemium pay-to-win games as well.
And some games where you go head to head with other players on your phone will suffer from the increased percentage of players using mouse+keyboard, giving them an edge over the mobile players on touchscreen.
Like how Google disrespects Linux users with Google Drive, now they introduce Android games on Google Play (Android based on Linux) that only run on Windows 10 or later. Sometimes Google sucks. It's OK though, Android games suck too.
The only ones I can think of that are any good that are not easily available on PC already are actually ports of older console games, e.g. Final Fantasy Tactics.
I keep looking up games and finding they have had PC ports. The only one I haven't found yet is the original Monument Valley. But it was rather short and easy, which was okay for a mobile game, maybe, but on PC it really wouldn't hold up. And I guess the sequel got a PC port anyway.
Every now and then I go through a period where to recover from work I grab something quick to eat and spend the rest of my night lying about in bed – Like you know it's bad if you can't even stomach sitting up at your desk. One day I came across Symphony of the Night for less than a fiver on the Google Play Store, thought why not, and after connecting a controller to my phone it instantly became one of my favourite games.
For me is the ability just to play mobile games in my PC, because I'm most of the time using it and not so much my phone, also because most of the games are casual you can easily multitask while playing, that's not easy to do it on mobile.
The Windows Subsystem for X naming convention is so annoying. It's an Android Subsystem for Windows, but leave it to Microsoft to make sure their product name comes first.
Oh I'm aware, but that is simply not how English works, and even if it were, it still breaks the decades long industry naming convention of "for <platform>" meaning "runs on <platform>".
Do you think the Firefox plugin for 1password (random example) is a plugin that runs inside 1password and allows you to use Firefox? Does the Linux driver for ext4 allow you to use a Linux kernel from within the driver, or the other way around? WSA is a "Windows subsystem" that allows you to run Android. That's it. But leave it to HN to always have someone make the exact same comment whenever WSL or WSA is mentioned.
Minimum PC specifications
Your PC will need to meet these requirements to play.
• OS: Windows 10 (v2004)
• Storage: Solid state drive (SSD) with 10 GB of available storage space
• Graphics: Intel® UHD Graphics 630 GPU or comparable
• Processor: 4 CPU physical cores (some games require an Intel CPU)
• Memory: 8 GB of RAM
• Windows admin account
• Hardware virtualization must be turned on
The openness of PC means that a second app store can exist and be successful on the Windows platform. If Google pulls this off, we might see a credible, large store of casual games on Windows for the first time. Right now, mobile shines for casual games and sees the bulk of investment for casual games. It would be a great boon for many casual gamers to be able to switch devices and carry over their games to the PC to play it on a larger screen, possibly with a controller.
Many, if not most, big Triple-A titles on PC, and consoles, are also filled with in game purchases of coins and loot boxes targeting whales. I guess you could say that those are also filled with ads, but at least it is for their own stuff in the game.
The only shining thing in gaming currently are the awesome indie titles that just keep on giving from a single purchase of the game.
Steam has a very hard-core gamer feel to it. Just look at its interface. I do often admire the simplicity of Google Play Store. And I think a dedicated store for casual gamers is both a user experience and discovery issue. Steam solves neither of those because they need to sell "all" kinds of games and with that comes the baggage of years of market choices like DLCs, game "editions" and bundles. Google could just go straight to "Click, Pay and Play".
The last time I bothered trying to make an Android app the SDK's emulator would not run on AMD CPUs and it seemed to have been deliberately crippled. Intel being the most obvious benefactor there.
No need to assume malice when incompetence is sufficient. At a guess, the SDK engineers likely had Intel workstations and didn’t test on other systems. In the course of doing low level optimizations, they may have written some non-portable code.
Only recently did Google start offering an AMD-based workstation, which is highly coveted because it’s incredibly fast for building Android or ChromeOS. Maybe this has been fixed since then from bug reports.
It's an Android emulator. It runs locally. It uses Google Play which already works worldwide. So why the heck does it ever need to be made aware that the world is divided up into countries?!
Aren’t these games already free with IAP? Did I miss an actual paid game?
Also this makes more sense for Mac , or even Linux (even though proton is changing things), where there is a dearth of games. Windows has plenty of high quality games courtesy of Steam, GOG, and Epic to name a few platforms
You could of course already do that, and I vaguely remember with I think Fortnight where some would play on the PC with keyboard and mouse against players with the touch interface, of course dominating every match.
Yes, you can already run Android emulators on PC, rooted, to play various games.
Professional mobile game Esports stars do this, because it makes streaming much more easier. While it might sound funny for a Westerner, some games like Freefire have their player count in tens of millions of people. They are popular in developing countries where people cannot afford PC or a console.
I do not know if Google Play has some kind of distribution limits to prevent installing within an emulator, but those would be quite trivial to work around. AFAIK there is not any kind of “real device id” system being used, although it would be dearly needed because of the cheaters.
I don't want to use weird unofficial Android emulators from random companies. I'd rather use this official Android emulator from Google, if it's possible to use it to run non-games, or games outside their laughably tiny whitelist.
I feel like the Android (and iOS) gaming market is filled with the kind of game that give you early successes followed by soulcrushing wait times bypassed through paywalls that can soak up infinite amounts of cash and therefore I have not given any of it a fair shot. This is the actual reason I always thought a "gaming phone" with a price tag rivaling a decent computer was very silly. Is that just me? Is there anything original worth playing, maybe even games you just buy outright?
Any game that includes microtransactions for any purpose than cosmetics is like this. That is virtually all of the mobile games. I play games you buy once and that is it. No consumables, etc. It is a scam and should be made illegal.
Perhaps because with existing emulation you don't (easily) get the play services, with this you will easily be able to pay for microtransations to "win" in your games and google gets their 30% cut of those. Its also easier so more people will use it and pay to win. Perhaps it also gives them more data on their users since they can directly snoop on everything running, connected to or stored on the Windows system, play store services running on an emulator is less useful to google.
Some PM and VP probably looked for ways to increase the P&L. I've talked with many googlers, and they interviewed me for leadership positions related to gaming before. I do not like their approach. No gamer wants this. I'm not even sure gaming on Android is even close to what it should be on mobile.
PC gamers, the ones who buy ssds, gaming gpus, want 4k 60fps, you're telling me they want to use mobile games in a vm or wrapper or whatever? You're telling me the people who buy $70 games want free 5 minute games?
There is no way one of these execs is a serious gamer, like the ones they're courting. This is lazy, cheap, and ignorant. I think Stadia was more meaningful than this even, because at least it had some games. This is just going to be a massive waste of time, and they'll just conclude that gaming is a tough business and they were too early.
I think it is more for your average preteen to play on the computer family to their favorite games when their phone are out for whatever reason. Also addict adult can play at work while being less suspect.
I don't think they are aiming to the hardcore gamerz on a 3k rig playing Cyberpunk in 8k.
That's understood. That market is decreasing rapidly tear over year. In addition, casual gaming on PC is a very small market, and laptops aren't equipped to be good at mobile inputs. It's really unlikely that they will be able to succeed at courting mobile gamers.
If Android had continuous cloud saves, a centralized ID for every game, achievements, cross device play, standardized keyboard and touchpad controls, this would be a much easier sell. They'd be like GamePass. This is unlikely to get support and be delightful.
