25 ms·
Android Games on PC
- lyu07282 3y agoYou 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.
- koinedad 3y agoApple Arcade is superior, no ads, no in-app purchases at least for families with young kids
- nisegami 3y ago>Minimum requirements >OS: Windows 10 (v2004) One day I'll figure out how to get Waydroid working, but I wish stuff like this worked on Linux more easily.
- FireInsight 3y agoThere are way more good games for PC than Android, and a lot of Android games are ad-filled garbage. Any bets on when Google kills this product?
- Tepix 3y agoIndeed, 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.
- scrlk 3y agoIt'll last long enough for people to milk promotions from it. Then someone else will come along and advocate to kill it off for their next promotion. And the cycle continues...
- akhosravian 3y agoI’d bet this is the last we hear of it until the sunset notification.
- hfkwer 3y agoPresumably to counter this: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/android/wsa/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/android/wsa/
- flashback2199 3y agoThe 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.
- MikusR 3y agoIt's a Windows Subsystem for running Android apps.
- shlubbert 3y agoWe know, but "<thing> for <platform>" usually implies that <thing> runs on <platform>, not the other way around.
- dandellion 3y agoYes, and if they had called it that it would have been less confusing.
- colonwqbang 3y agoI hope they rename everything to follow the same scheme just to dial up the confusion. Office for Mac -> Mac for Office
- eugenekolo 3y ago[BROUGHT TO YOU BY WINDOWS] Subsystem for X.
- neodymiumphish 3y agoI recall this being due to issues with using a product name like Android as the first word in a product name. I may be mistaken though.
- fendy3002 3y agoAre there any valid android games that's also good to play on android and on PC? I think of vampire survivor but it also has PC version.
- moron4hire 3y agoThe 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.
- norman784 3y agoFor 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.
- fendy3002 3y agoFair enough, though I feel that using mouse instead of touch is less enjoyable for some games.
- eugenekolo 3y agoI think it could be good for games you have a continuous account in, but sometimes want to play on PC, and sometimes on your phone. The better games have some account login and online synchronization... but also requires sometimes buying two copies.
- haunter 3y agoOld console games that are not available on PC Dragon Quest games (1-6, 8, Builders) Final Fantasy Tactics etc.
- 3y ago
- jgtrosh 3y agoQuite off topic, but some PC games are now on Android. See for example Space Cadet: https://github.com/fexed/Pinball-on-Android/releases https://github.com/fexed/Pinball-on-Android/releases Once you get to enjoy a proper straightforward PC game on your phone, most every other ad-filled Android game feels insulting.
- thih9 3y agoThis 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).
- jjice 3y agoSounds like the Steam Deck may be an even better option here if you're looking for PC games. First party Nintendo is something special though.
- Asooka 3y agoYeah, 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.
- sureglymop 3y agoAlso SuperTux! Great mario-like game that I played on linux before it was available on android.
- freedomben 3y agoAgreed, SuperTux is indeed great. Also Super Tux Kart is remarkably good, and fully FOSS and available for PC (Linux, Windows) and Android[1] [1]: https://supertuxkart.net/Main_Page https://supertuxkart.net/Main_Page
- Tepix 3y agoOnly on Windows so far, bummer.
- Jowsey 3y agoOn 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.
- marcodiego 3y ago> 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.
- bacchusracine 3y agoIf only there was something for xorg that worked. Mate Desktop is not yet Wayland compatible.
- terracottalite 3y agoYou probably know about it, but in case you don't know: You can run Wayland inside Xorg via cage[1] so you don't need to use a Wayland compositor. [1]: https://github.com/cage-kiosk/cage https://github.com/cage-kiosk/cage
- GranPC 3y agoI run Waydroid on X by running a Wayland compositor on top of X. Works OK.
- raspyberr 3y agoUnfortunately you can't access the service without an account.
- m3h 3y agoIt doesn't seem to be available in my region yet. 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.
- RunSet 3y agoThe 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.
- wffurr 3y ago>> 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.
- RunSet 3y agoWithout going into it too much I don't consider incompetence sufficient in this case.
- scarface_74 3y agoI wouldn’t say “shine”. Mobile games are mostly shitty ad ridden apps with in app purchases of coins and loot boxes targeting “whales”.
- xdrosenheim 3y ago
- tonetheman 3y ago[dead]
- _cenw 3y agoI 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?
- SomeHacker44 3y agoAny 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.
- hienyimba 3y agoYou 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.
- appleflaxen 3y agoAre you starting a being pool for when it dies? I'm putting 25 cents on March 7, 2027.
- mulletbum 3y agoAre 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.
- hienyimba 3y agoWhat 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.
- govg 3y agoWhat 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.
- axus 3y agoDon't they automatically make 30% of the revenue from Google Play app sales?
- notum 3y ago
- haunter 3y agoTried this but wasn't impressed. LDPlayer has much better performance still + sideloading apk is trivial https://www.ldplayer.net/ https://www.ldplayer.net/ Used Bluestacks before that which was also okay https://www.bluestacks.com/ https://www.bluestacks.com/
- reclipse 3y agoWonder how will the touch to keyboard mapping will work
- jacek 3y ago[flagged]
- hbn 3y agoOh boy, millions of ad-ridden, pay-to-win, copy-pasted virtual casinos, right from the convenience of my PC. Gotta get me one of those beta invites!
- Asooka 3y agoYeah, 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!
- jeroenhd 3y agoRollercoaster 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.
- NegativeLatency 3y agoOpen Rollercoaster Tycoon is free and cross platform https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2 https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2 (been having fun going back to play older simulation games)
- tagoogsucks 3y agoLike 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.
- marcodiego 3y agoWaydroid 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.
- ramosu 3y agowhy
- lyu07282 3y agoPerhaps 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.
- axus 3y agoI 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?
- Dalewyn 3y agoIt would be nice indeed if I can eventually play FGO on a Windows machine, saves me the trouble of keeping a tablet around for it.
- billyhoffman 3y agoOpen the start menu on a consumer version of Windows today and you mY think this already happened: Candy crush, Bejeweled, Netflix…
- ramshanker 3y agoSystem Requirements: Hardware virtualization must be turned on. Now that is one ODD of a system requirement.
- pjc50 3y agoI'm guessing it .. uses hardware virtualization to run Android in a VM?
- tetrisgm 3y agoSome 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.
- andybak 3y agoPC Gamers != gamers with PCs Or to put it another way - people with PCs are not a monolithic block with a single profile.
- tetrisgm 3y agoI recommend you look at the market share for pc, and the overlap with casual gamer spend for the available casual games.
- npsomaratna 3y agoAgreed. I don't really have time to play PC games anymore, but when I did, I fell into the demographic you described. (Maybe not 4k 60fps—after all, one does have to compromise sometimes...)
- aloisdg 3y agoI 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.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
- bacchusracine 3y agoWindows only: 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
- chaostheory 3y agoAren’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
- hospitalJail 3y agoAt first I thought this was pretty stupid since mobile games suck... But I remembered I give my kids educational games on the phone, and this could be useful. Anyway, if anyone wants to drop some Kids games that are educational, I'm all ears.
- eunos 3y agoToo bad it was Windows only. I'm thinking playing Genshin on my Linux Laptop instead of my potato phone
- grishka 3y ago"Not available in your region". 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?!
- maccard 3y agoIt's a way to slow roll out to find issues that happen at scale.
- yazzku 3y agoNo.
- smileyham 3y agovery limited games...
- modeless 3y agoIs there a way to jailbreak this to run arbitrary apps?
- miohtama 3y agoYes, 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. https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/224119/how-to-gain-root-on-bluestacks-android-emulator/224120?noredirect=1#comment337958_224120 https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/224119/how-to-ga... 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.
- modeless 3y agoI 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.
- user_7832 3y agoSlightly 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.
- 0x073 3y agoThe question is will it last longer than stadia.
- a13o 3y agoIf Windows can run Android apps, they can bring back Windows Phone. The only issue with that platform is nobody made apps for it.
- Schnitz 3y agoWhat’s the over under on how many months from now this will get the axe?