Chromebooks already enable owners to play Android games, though the experience may not be quite as great as what you get using a smartphone or tablet. That’s slowly changing, though, thanks to the compatibility mode the company rolled out in October 2021 and the Gaming Overlay beta that’ll be introduced later this year.
“Chromebooks had an incredible year in 2021,” Hartell explained, stating, “We’re really excited about the continued growth of Android games on Chrome OS in particular.” The company says the use of Android on its Chrome operating system grew more than 50% year-over-year, and it largely has games to thank for this expansion. It helps, of course, that some Android games have been optimized for playing on Chromebooks.
Steam will no doubt help fuel these numbers, though it remains to be seen how many of the laptops support the software and whether Chromebook owners would rather use a cloud-based platform like Stadia. Google is pointing interested consumers to its Chromebook Community forums to learn more about the Steam Alpha and give it a try themselves — though, at the time of writing, the information doesn’t appear to be live on the forums yet.
Beyond Steam, Google also said it’ll release the public beta for its new Chrome OS Gaming Overlay later on in 2022, though only some games will support it at that time. With this, Chromebook owners will be able to play Android games “with user-driven mouse and keyboard configurations” without the titles’ developers having to make changes first.
