Android Games on PC
play.google.com
play.google.com
Who knows, maybe we could compile android to web assembly and have android applets on webpages!
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.
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.
I don’t get why gamers get into this tribal mentality of only one good thing may exist.
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.
"Introducing Google Play Pass. Your pass to hundreds of awesome games and apps without ads or in-app purchases."
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.
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:
Source, played MapleStory alot in the past.
Calling this now. This is a likely candidate for the Google graveyard.
Waiting for Voice to die. I thought it would immediately follow gTalk.
I wonder if the number would be transferrable to a different service.
I'm using that instead of my own phone number for sites that only offer SMS verification.
This appears to include Windows 10: https://play.google.com/googleplaygames#section-faqs "To participate in the beta, your PC must meet these minimum requirements:
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.
Note that WSL was born out of the first attempt to have Android support on UWP.
Nowadays better stick to classical Windows development, or server workloads.
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
Looking at this as an example: https://github.com/WSA-Community/WSAGAScript
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.
> SafetyNet
TIL
I understand it fulfills the "android" promise, but the majority of the ecosystem needed Play Services is the harsh reality.
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.
I'm putting 25 cents on March 7, 2027.
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?
Once you get to enjoy a proper straightforward PC game on your phone, most every other ad-filled Android game feels insulting.
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).
> 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.
Looks like my account isn't eligible for the beta yet, presumably it's a slow rollout.
Not in the linux land. Last time I tried waydroid it worked impressively well.
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.
And the cycle continues...
I think of vampire survivor but it also has PC version.
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.
The better games have some account login and online synchronization... but also requires sometimes buying two copies.
Dragon Quest games (1-6, 8, Builders)
Final Fantasy Tactics
etc.
I replied: "Old console games that are not available on PC"
You then replied the same as me but iOS, hence the "Yes? It's the same thing"
You said
“ Old console games that are not available on PC Dragon Quest games (1-6, 8, Builders) Final Fantasy Tactics etc.”
I thought you were listing examples of old games that are not on mobile (that’s completely on me)
Office for Mac -> Mac for Office
I may be mistaken though.
I think it would make more sense if they called it:
* Windows Android subsystem
* Windows Linux subsystem
Etc
Windows (Subsystem for Linux)
And not
(Windows subsystem) for Linux
No one calls it that. That's the point. It's the 1Password plugin for Firefox.
Another comment mentioned that WSA is quite technical to set up, and this is a simpler alternative.
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
>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.
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.
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.
The only shining thing in gaming currently are the awesome indie titles that just keep on giving from a single purchase of the game.
First one being Steam?
> If Google pulls this off, we might see a credible, large store of casual games on Windows for the first time
Steam has tons of casual games too.
Used Bluestacks before that which was also okay https://www.bluestacks.com/
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?!
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.
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
Now that is one ODD of a system requirement.
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-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.
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.
Or to put it another way - people with PCs are not a monolithic block with a single profile.
(Maybe not 4k 60fps—after all, one does have to compromise sometimes...)
I don't think they are aiming to the hardcore gamerz on a 3k rig playing Cyberpunk in 8k.
This isn’t for that kind of PC gamers, its for Android gamers that happen to have a PC (which is probably a much larger market, in terms of people.)
> There is no way one of these execs is a serious gamer, like the ones they're courting.
They aren’t courting serious gamers, they are courting people who already play mobile games.
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.