2022 is undoubtedly the year for gamers, with major developments rolling out for various gaming platforms every week. Continuing the trend is the latest announcement from Google, one which was awaited by many gamers around the world. The tech major has now officially initiated the support for Steam on its Chrome OS.
You may feel like you have heard of this before. That is because the functionality has been hinted at for the past couple of years, and several deep dives into Chrome OS codes have pointed at gaming-dedicated functions on Chromebooks. Most recently, support for RGB backlight on keys for Chromebooks was also found.
Anyway, Google has made things official now. In a new blog post, it has announced the launch of Steam on Chrome OS Dev channel. This means that the video game service is not available on the mainstream Chrome OS just as yet. Instead, an "alpha-quality version" of Steam will be available on Chrome OS in the Dev channel "for a small set of recent Chromebooks."
Think of it as a trial for Chromebooks to host Steam and its games. The accompanying limitations will thus allow only a few Steam games to run on a limited number of Chromebook models as yet. In an accompanying page on the "Chromium project" to bring Steam to Chrome OS, Google mentions that "anything can break" with this alpha version of Steam and hence it is not recommended for users to try it on a Chromebook that they rely on for their daily use. "You will encounter crashes, performance regressions, and never-before-seen bugs," Google clears.
Correspondingly, the system requirements are also high considering what Chromebooks are usually known for. For now, downloading and installing Steam on Chrome OS will require at least 8GB of memory on an 11th Gen Core i5 or i7 processor, in addition to Intel Iris Xe Graphics. With this, only a few of existing Chromebooks will support Steam, including Acer Chromebook 514 and Chromebook 515, Acer Chromebook Spin 713, Asus Chromebook Flip CX5, Asus Chromebook CX9, HP Pro G2 Chromebook and Lenovo 5i-14 Chromebook.
Even the list of supported games, though long, does not include all of the games featured on Steam. For now, it features titles like Portal 2, Hades, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, World of Tanks Blitz, The Elder Scrolls V: SSE, Vampire Survivors, Team Fortress 2, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Dead Cells, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Unturned and more.
Google shares the ideal settings for playing these games on its Chromium blog. In addition, it also mentions the steps to install Steam on the Chrome OS Dev channel and the things to keep in mind while doing so. If you don't wish to wait for the rollout of the stable version of Steam on your Chromebook, head over to the Chromium blog and follow the instructions to try out Steam right away.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Welcome To My Blog.