What They Say
9to5Google spotted that a plan for Chromebooks to support the Steam gaming service might be getting close as it said that Google now has timelines on the implementation. The site found a list of Chromebooks that is in a code change.
- Volta – Acer Chromebook 514 (CB514-1H)
- Volet – Acer Chromebook 515
- Voxel – Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (CP713-3W)
- Delbin – ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5 (CX5500)
- Drobit – ASUS Chromebook CX9 (CX9400)
- Elemi – HP Pro c640 G2 Chromebook
- Lindar – Unknown/unreleased Chromebook from Lenovo
Also in the code, there are minimum requirements of an 11th Gen Core i5 or i7 and a minimum of 7GB of RAM. The blog said that Nvidia appears to be directly involved with the development of Steam support for Chrome OS, with multiple code changes being developed and submitted by Nvidia employees. Nvidia was already set to have a greater presence in Chrome OS thanks to its collaboration with MediaTek.
Chromebooks are also being developed which can accept discrete GPUs.
What We Think
Gaming is not just an add-on for geeks these days. Users really expect to be able to play games on their devices to the limits of their capabilities. Of course, Google already has its Stadia app which can support internet-based gaming, but without the higher performance of, for example, dedicated GPUs. Could the use of discrete GPUs also act as an enabler for richer VR experiences on headsets?
In digging around about this, I did find a site that showed how to get a Chromebook to support Stream, once you had installed Linux. However, as it said “games are much more hardware intensive then Chrome OS itself and what Chromebooks are designed for, hence you might find some game may run quite horribly”. (BR)
