At the end of September Google has shut down its Stadia gaming platform, an ambitious attempt to let people play video games without needing actual video game hardware to play them. Today, Google announced a new lineup of Chromebooks with a focus on cloud-based gaming.
I know these two things are not directly connected. They are never in companies as big as Google. It’s not like the exact same product team threw Stadia in the bin, took a step to the counter, pulled off a sheet covering a laptop and said “tadaah!”. But the optics are still fun usthe people who just watch from the sidelines, wondering—between Inbox and Google Reader and countless other cool things—who’s really in charge of the company’s overall gaming strategy.
Anyway! The new announcement today is that an upcoming line of Chromebooks (a really useful Google product) made in partnership with Acer, ASUS and Lenovo (Chromebooks are made by third parties) is designed specifically with cloud gaming features.
While that doesn’t mean much in terms of performance—these are Chromebooks, and we’re talking about streaming games, not playing them locally—the three will do everything they can within those limitations to please gamers, including shipping with larger screens (15-16 inches) and RGB keyboards.
Most importantly, though, they all come with three different streaming platforms pre-installed and ready to go: Xbox Cloud Gaming, Geforce Now, and…Amazon Luna. Which is a very funny and timely way of saying, well, if you don’t want to play ours cloud gaming service you might be playing on someone else’s.
The Lenovo one will cost $599, the ACER one is $650, and the ASUS one doesn’t have a price yet. You can check out some more specs here.