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Comment by zucker42 | Hacker News Reader

Probably the millions of people who own/have access to one and don't have the ability to buy another computer.

Probably not since it requires an 11th gen i5 or better chrome book https://www.androidcentral.com/steam-for-chrome-os-supported...

This is whats frustrating to me. We're talking a small slice of most chromebooks out there.

I actually have used old chromebooks with crouton to install steam and play games. You have to pick "lightweight" games like Baldurs Gate, but it still opens up a lot of possibility.

So I had hoped maybe something could be brought to old hardware, but I guess not.

I think you start by targeting the platforms with more horsepower and can move down over time. Obviously they might just not do that work and stay on the high powered ones, but I don't think it's a given.

The lower specs you allow, the more likely you’re to hit poor user experiences that piss users off.

It's a small slice today, but today's high-end computers are tomorrow's cheap used machines, and future budget machines will be more powerful than present high-end ones.

Thank you, you took a dour thought of mine and turned it into a very hopeful one.

While this was not stated in the linked post, other sources said it will be limited to x86 chromebooks that run 11th+ gen Intel CPUs or equivalent.

That basically limits it to models that cost >800$ making it a very niche product.

Here's to hoping this is just a starting point, might be that it's a lot easier to support these models.

I guess I was initially thinking more resource intensive games, but there are lots of smaller games that a Chromebook could handle.

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