Google Just Made Four Big Upgrades to Android Gaming on Your Windows PC

Google has just announced notable improvements to the Google Play gaming experience on Windows PCs, with improvements covering game discovery and purchases, and the announcement that more paid titles are now available for desktop.

Although an official Windows client for Google Play apps and games has been available for several years, these latest updates mean the experience is more refined than ever.

There are four main changes for gamers wanting to play Android games on Windows.

• First, Google is “actively increasing” the number of paid premium games fully optimized for PC. Android games don’t benefit from this optimization by default and need to be specifically modified to support PC gaming (keyboard controls and all), so more titles meeting this criteria will be welcome.

• Second, there’s a new PC section in the Games tab of the Play Store on mobile devices, so you can actually see which titles will be cross-platform compatible before installing them.

• Third, you only need to purchase a game once to use it on both mobile and desktop (which wasn’t always the case in the past).

• The latest update is Game Trials. On selected titles, you can go ahead and start playing for free. Once you reach a certain time or progress limit, you will then be asked if you want to purchase the game (and your progress will carry over if you decide to make the purchase).

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The announcements don’t specify how long it will take for all of this to roll out, but Google says games such as Moonlight Peaks, sledding gameAnd Low-budget repairs will be available on PC in the “coming months”. None of these games are available in the Play Store app on Android yet.

There’s a lot to like about running Android games on the desktop, including a much larger screen and keyboard and mouse input options, so if you’re keen to give it a go, here’s how you can try it.

How to play Android games on your PC

Start by visiting the Google Play Games web portal on your Windows PC. Follow the download prompts and you will be guided through the process of installing the software and entering your Google account details (for syncing purposes). Assuming you’ve actually played a game on your Android device at some point, your profile and stats carry over to the desktop.

At the end of the installation process, you will be presented with a list of games you have already played that are available on Windows. You can also find this list later by clicking on From your library on the Google Play Games app home page. The majority of titles I’ve played on Android seem present and decent.

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The gaming experience is, overall, intuitive and simple. Most of the games I tried gave me no problems, although sometimes the desktop controls can take a while: click the keyboard icon to the left of the game window to remap them (you can also find some control settings in the games themselves).

You can also click the visual settings button (the sliders icon) to change how the game is displayed on screen, and there’s also a volume control button on the left. Games tend to stick to their default orientation from mobile, whether landscape or portrait, but you can adjust the size of the game window.

The games I tried from my own library were pretty hit or miss when it came to syncing: some carried over my progress from my phone and others didn’t, so it seems likely that the onus is largely on the developers to implement this right now (and it’s something Google clearly wants to improve).

#DRIVE on the PC.
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From the home page, click the magnifying glass icon to explore games from the desktop: you can filter out titles that haven’t been optimized for PC, and from what I can see, there’s already plenty to choose from. I couldn’t find any playtests available at the time of writing, so it looks like these are still in the works.

Android games on PC can be a lot of fun, especially ones that work well with keyboards or gamepads, and I think it’s something a lot of gamers should set up, especially given the latest improvements. And when you’re not sitting in front of your Windows PC, you can continue playing normally on your phone or tablet.