A little over a month ago, on December 10, as part of The Game Awards 2021, Microsoft representatives officially announced the release of their latest Play Games game service for the Windows operating system (we are talking about both Windows 10 and the more recent Windows 11).
This platform will provide gamers from all over the world with a native ability to run Android games on a computer without the need to install third-party software and emulators. And today, January 20, Microsoft officially launched beta testing of this service, which, however, will not be available to everyone.
The fact is that Google, in its traditional manner, launches testing of a new service only in certain regions. For example, at the moment, the Play Games platform is available for use only in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan – outside of these regions, you can only try the features of the service using a VPN.
In addition, in the beta test mode, gamers will apparently be given access to only certain releases, which may differ depending on the region.
Unfortunately, Google did not provide a complete list of available projects, but there is a list of games that are definitely available:
- Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
- Summoners War
- State of Survival: The Joker Collaboration
- Three Kingdoms Tactics
At the same time, Google representatives noted the main advantages that open up to the user who will play through Google Play Games:
“Gamers can conveniently and quickly search, download and play their favorite mobile games on PC, taking full advantage of the large screen and the ability to use the keyboard and mouse. And you will no longer lose your progress when switching between devices – all data is stored in the Google Play Games profile, ”said Arjun Dayal, lead developer of the Google Play Games service.
However, when the service goes into full release, gamers will have to prepare their system to run mobile games – the system requirements are very high. For example, Microsoft said that the service requires at least an 8-core processor with support for hardware virtualization, 8 GB of RAM, 20 GB of SSD, a gaming-grade GPU, and Windows 10 from v2004 or Windows 11. This means that fans of mobile games need to have a fairly powerful PC to access the service, but Google promises to lower system requirements in the future.