It's been a while since I looked at Android games on the Play Store, so it's possible things are better now and I'm not aware, but isn't it essentially a wasteland of microtransaction-based (or...
It's been a while since I looked at Android games on the Play Store, so it's possible things are better now and I'm not aware, but isn't it essentially a wasteland of microtransaction-based (or ad-filled) shovelware that nobody with even half a brain cell would waste any time on?
I have games on Steam that are also mobile games, but I can't play them mobile without buying them again. With this, I can just pay once for Balatro, Slay the Spire, Stardew Valley and play them...
I have games on Steam that are also mobile games, but I can't play them mobile without buying them again. With this, I can just pay once for Balatro, Slay the Spire, Stardew Valley and play them on desktop or mobile to name a few examples. They're cheaper on the Play store too.
Shovelware is an issue with any storefront. Steam and any console store has curation and some level of filters to keep garbage out of sight, but by volume, there's still a problem.
Shovelware is an issue with any storefront. Steam and any console store has curation and some level of filters to keep garbage out of sight, but by volume, there's still a problem.
Personally I struggle with Play store. It's hard to discover anything good. Everything I buy comes recommended by a third party (or something I already own, on Steam for example).
Personally I struggle with Play store. It's hard to discover anything good. Everything I buy comes recommended by a third party (or something I already own, on Steam for example).
There's probably some gems littered in there but yeah basically. The mobile gaming market sucks because while you could make lots of interesting games for mobile, getting your game promoted and...
There's probably some gems littered in there but yeah basically. The mobile gaming market sucks because while you could make lots of interesting games for mobile, getting your game promoted and discovered is basically impossible with the literal piles of trash/remakes/copies/etc.
Some are decent. I use the SeyeonSoft dress up games (particularly Lily Diary and Lily Style) for character design ideas. They remind me of old Flash dress-up games in a good way. Every other...
Some are decent. I use the SeyeonSoft dress up games (particularly Lily Diary and Lily Style) for character design ideas. They remind me of old Flash dress-up games in a good way. Every other dressup game I've tried has annoying minigames or gameplay elements, or have limited customization (e.g. each hairstyle comes in a single color).
I've actually looked to see if I could play them on a computer in the past for convenience, because there just aren't many options like it after Flash shut down. They're among the only mobile apps where I paid for the ad-free version, and buy the add-on content.
This is cool! I’m happy any time there’s more cross-compatibility. The naive optimist in me still hopes for a future where everything runs on everything. I also wonder if this will end up working...
This is cool! I’m happy any time there’s more cross-compatibility. The naive optimist in me still hopes for a future where everything runs on everything.
I also wonder if this will end up working via Proton? It would be both neat and convenient to play an Android game on Windows on Linux.
Now to find ones worth playing (that aren’t already available elsewhere)…
The big thing is going to be architecture compatibility. You could always get waydroid for Android compatibility via containerized LineageOS. Not every game is built for x86_64, however.
The big thing is going to be architecture compatibility.
You could always get waydroid for Android compatibility via containerized LineageOS. Not every game is built for x86_64, however.
It seems like there's already an emulator built in, which makes sense because that seems like a hard requirement for Google to actually support the majority of their library on PC. I'd wager that...
It seems like there's already an emulator built in, which makes sense because that seems like a hard requirement for Google to actually support the majority of their library on PC. I'd wager that a strong majority of games in the play store exclusively have ARM builds as x86 builds historically wouldn't have been particularly valuable uses of developer time.
I found an older article stating that they were supporting ARM games specifically on Intel desktop chips through something called Intel Bridge (or something like that). When paired with this article now stating that AMD desktop chips are now expected to work better it seems they've expanded their emulation support. Whether or not said support works through layers like WINE or Proton though is unknown to me. They could be doing OS driver shenanigans or something at a lower level than those tools can really deal with, but I have no idea how that technology is actually working under the hood.
Edit: after doing a bit more research I'm unsure if they actually have an emulator or are leaning harder into the Intel Bridge thing, although in practice they're probably basically the same from a user's perspective. Intel Bridge calls itself a post-compiler and it's job is to translate compiled-for-Android stuff to Windows by recompiling the existing assembly through their tool chain. It seems like Intel Bridge does work on AMD since it's actually a piece of software, not a hardware component. Not entirely sure why the older article suggested AMD support would be lacking when using Intel Bridge. Maybe it was a licensing or past stability thing.
Does nobody remember when Microsoft tried to do this just within the last couple years with an android emulation subsystem? And shortly thereafter it was abandoned, probably because nobody wants...
Does nobody remember when Microsoft tried to do this just within the last couple years with an android emulation subsystem? And shortly thereafter it was abandoned, probably because nobody wants to play trash mobile games on PC. The only mobile games worth playing are already ports of previously released PC and console games!
It might work a little better with Google being the developer. I think part of what turned people off about Microsoft’s attempt was the involvement of an app store that most people probably hadn’t...
It might work a little better with Google being the developer. I think part of what turned people off about Microsoft’s attempt was the involvement of an app store that most people probably hadn’t used, and thus had no pre-existing purchases or interest in. Being able to install Google Play on Windows solves that problem.
I've had the early version of the play store installed for a while, but very few of the games I wanted to play were actually on there, so I went to BlueStacks again. Having a native version is a...
I've had the early version of the play store installed for a while, but very few of the games I wanted to play were actually on there, so I went to BlueStacks again. Having a native version is a much better option, imo
Anything that improves the value of existing purchases is cool, but I’d be more interested in seeing this on Linux since that’d provide a way to play some cross platform titles with aggressive...
Anything that improves the value of existing purchases is cool, but I’d be more interested in seeing this on Linux since that’d provide a way to play some cross platform titles with aggressive anticheat that don't play nice with WINE/Proton under Linux. Performance would probably be pretty great too since it’d be able to build on top of the existing Linux kernel there instead of needing to spin up a full VM like under Windows.
It seems like this program would exclude the many Android games distributed via apk outside the Play store, such as itch. So not actually every single game even before the opt out. Still, seeing...
It seems like this program would exclude the many Android games distributed via apk outside the Play store, such as itch. So not actually every single game even before the opt out. Still, seeing these barriers being broken down is great.
Aren't those games very much based on needing to be out and about, along with phone hardware integration, like the gps (and AR stuff?) That would be a ton of extra work to get running on a laptop...
Aren't those games very much based on needing to be out and about, along with phone hardware integration, like the gps (and AR stuff?)
That would be a ton of extra work to get running on a laptop...
It's been a while since I looked at Android games on the Play Store, so it's possible things are better now and I'm not aware, but isn't it essentially a wasteland of microtransaction-based (or ad-filled) shovelware that nobody with even half a brain cell would waste any time on?
I have games on Steam that are also mobile games, but I can't play them mobile without buying them again. With this, I can just pay once for Balatro, Slay the Spire, Stardew Valley and play them on desktop or mobile to name a few examples. They're cheaper on the Play store too.
Shovelware is an issue with any storefront. Steam and any console store has curation and some level of filters to keep garbage out of sight, but by volume, there's still a problem.
Personally I struggle with Play store. It's hard to discover anything good. Everything I buy comes recommended by a third party (or something I already own, on Steam for example).
There's probably some gems littered in there but yeah basically. The mobile gaming market sucks because while you could make lots of interesting games for mobile, getting your game promoted and discovered is basically impossible with the literal piles of trash/remakes/copies/etc.
Some are decent. I use the SeyeonSoft dress up games (particularly Lily Diary and Lily Style) for character design ideas. They remind me of old Flash dress-up games in a good way. Every other dressup game I've tried has annoying minigames or gameplay elements, or have limited customization (e.g. each hairstyle comes in a single color).
I've actually looked to see if I could play them on a computer in the past for convenience, because there just aren't many options like it after Flash shut down. They're among the only mobile apps where I paid for the ad-free version, and buy the add-on content.
This is cool! I’m happy any time there’s more cross-compatibility. The naive optimist in me still hopes for a future where everything runs on everything.
I also wonder if this will end up working via Proton? It would be both neat and convenient to play an Android game on Windows on Linux.
Now to find ones worth playing (that aren’t already available elsewhere)…
The big thing is going to be architecture compatibility.
You could always get waydroid for Android compatibility via containerized LineageOS. Not every game is built for x86_64, however.
It seems like there's already an emulator built in, which makes sense because that seems like a hard requirement for Google to actually support the majority of their library on PC. I'd wager that a strong majority of games in the play store exclusively have ARM builds as x86 builds historically wouldn't have been particularly valuable uses of developer time.
I found an older article stating that they were supporting ARM games specifically on Intel desktop chips through something called Intel Bridge (or something like that). When paired with this article now stating that AMD desktop chips are now expected to work better it seems they've expanded their emulation support. Whether or not said support works through layers like WINE or Proton though is unknown to me. They could be doing OS driver shenanigans or something at a lower level than those tools can really deal with, but I have no idea how that technology is actually working under the hood.
Edit: after doing a bit more research I'm unsure if they actually have an emulator or are leaning harder into the Intel Bridge thing, although in practice they're probably basically the same from a user's perspective. Intel Bridge calls itself a post-compiler and it's job is to translate compiled-for-Android stuff to Windows by recompiling the existing assembly through their tool chain. It seems like Intel Bridge does work on AMD since it's actually a piece of software, not a hardware component. Not entirely sure why the older article suggested AMD support would be lacking when using Intel Bridge. Maybe it was a licensing or past stability thing.
Intel was actually an early supplier of Android SoCs, via their atom lineup.
They weren’t very popular.
Does nobody remember when Microsoft tried to do this just within the last couple years with an android emulation subsystem? And shortly thereafter it was abandoned, probably because nobody wants to play trash mobile games on PC. The only mobile games worth playing are already ports of previously released PC and console games!
It might work a little better with Google being the developer. I think part of what turned people off about Microsoft’s attempt was the involvement of an app store that most people probably hadn’t used, and thus had no pre-existing purchases or interest in. Being able to install Google Play on Windows solves that problem.
I've had the early version of the play store installed for a while, but very few of the games I wanted to play were actually on there, so I went to BlueStacks again. Having a native version is a much better option, imo
Anything that improves the value of existing purchases is cool, but I’d be more interested in seeing this on Linux since that’d provide a way to play some cross platform titles with aggressive anticheat that don't play nice with WINE/Proton under Linux. Performance would probably be pretty great too since it’d be able to build on top of the existing Linux kernel there instead of needing to spin up a full VM like under Windows.
It seems like this program would exclude the many Android games distributed via apk outside the Play store, such as itch. So not actually every single game even before the opt out. Still, seeing these barriers being broken down is great.
Be neat if Ingress and Pokemon Go work. Bet they'll disable those ones though, as they're the only ones I'd have even a little interest in.
Aren't those games very much based on needing to be out and about, along with phone hardware integration, like the gps (and AR stuff?)
That would be a ton of extra work to get running on a laptop...
Yep. I don't expect for a second they'll be part of this effort!
Or any number of those server side gacha games that were turned off when they don't make Honkai / Genshin level money. I miss a good number of those.
Linux games being ported to windows. Interesting!