When it comes to choosing an OS, it is often not just down to price or ease of use, but the application that runs on it. And for many of us, whether it can support the games you want to play or not. For many, this is specifically the thing that is holding back Google’s ChromeOS from making a massive dent I the OS space, because even though there are some replacement applications that can do things similar to Microsoft Office (with Microsoft working on making the applications work on ChromeOS as well), the one thing you can’t do on it is play games.
considering that many ChromeOS machines are cheaper and low-spec, it makes sense to not have them as gaming machines. It is something which Google wants to change as ChromeOS product leader review in an interview with Android Police that the company is working with Valve to get the platform to get Steam to run on ChromeOS.
It’s a great idea to help make the operating system more appealing to gamers and while many games don’t support Linux as an operating system (on which ChromeOS is based) there certainly are enough games – though mostly smaller indie titles – that do to make the effort worthwhile. If they can ensure the entire Steam experience is seamless with as few issues as possible with games they may just open themselves to a whole new market.
Google is unlikely to make a massive dent in the laptop OS market anytime soon but with a concerted effort to support more and more applications and new games, we may see it as a viable alternative. The bigger question is probably more in seeing how long Google is prepared to spend money and keep pushing the platform to get it that point or whether they will eventually throw in the towel much the same way Microsoft did with Windows Phone.
Last Updated: January 20, 2020
