First Microsoft and Amazon conspired to make Android on Windows, and now Google is betting on its own rights. Starting today, some Windows users in the US can try the Google Play Games beta on their computer.
At the time of this writing, I have just over 60 games available on the Windows Play Games Store from the US. All of them are available for free download because these are the games that make money from in-app purchases. It’s a mixture of games that resemble or sound like more famous games, laid-back building/design games, gacha lure, and then Genshin Impact. The choice is likely to expand, but the nature of Android’s free environment won’t change anytime soon.
If one of these games has already got you hooked, you can sync your progress, achievements, friends, and other Google Play stats between your phone and Windows.
I don’t have a Play game on my latest list, so I picked Zombeast: Zombie Shooter from the library and installed it for a test drive. The game is what it says on the label; you make your way forward through the linear passageways, occasionally moving left and right, pressing to fire as your auto-aim lands on the right zombie or oddly placed gas canister.
Knowing that I’m playing on Windows, Zombeast uploaded a keyboard management tutorial. Everything worked as expected and the game ran responsively. But playing a shooter, even a rail shooter like this, is frustrating on PC and being so limited. You can’t look with the mouse, you can barely move in any direction other than forward, and you only use the primary mouse button. I went through a couple of levels, was notified that I would get a free gold revolver upgrade that would have cost $1.99 otherwise, and then jumped out.
I wrote that Play Games was available to “some”users at the top because not every system can access Google Play on Windows. You will need Windows 10 or 11, a 10 GB SSD, at least an Intel UHD Graphics 630 or equivalent graphics card, a processor with at least four cores, 8 GB of RAM, and a Windows administrator account. You also need to enable hardware virtualization in your BIOS settings and allow Google Play to enable certain Windows hypervisor settings.
This is an exciting time for Google to launch the beta version of its Play Store for Windows in the US. Microsoft recently launched a similar limited trial of Amazon Appstore apps that use the Android subsystem for Windows built on top of the subsystem for Linux. The Amazon App Store is not licensed by Google and does not have the same available APIs as Android devices, although Amazon and Microsoft can probably replicate some or even most of them. Meanwhile, Google offers this fully integrated and synced app, starting with a limited number of games that provide good desktop support (probably Chromebooks).
Google Listed Image / Kevin Purdy