Naturally, access to software and games is just as vital as hardware in this case. As a result, Google has formed alliances with NVIDIA, Amazon, and Microsoft to guarantee that their devices support GeForce Now, Luna, and Xbox Game Pass out of the box. The NVIDIA relationship is perhaps the most important, as the firm is bringing GeForce Now’s high-performance RTX 3080 tier to Chromebooks for the first time, which means games will run at up to 1600p resolution at 120 frames per second with ray tracing enabled (assuming the game supports these specs, of course). NVIDIA has created a progressive web app (PWA) that allows you to open GeForce Now right from your Chromebook’s dock or launcher.
Microsoft also created a PWA for Game Pass, but it works exactly the same as it would on a PC – if you have an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership, you can stream any Game Pass game to your Chromebook. Similarly, an Amazon Luna membership gives you access to a constantly changing library of over 100 games.
Google is also improving ChromeOS to make it simpler to start games directly. When you press the “anything” search button on your Chromebook, you can just put in the name of the game you want to play and it will start as if it were natively installed. For the time being, this will only function with the GeForce Now library (as well as applications on Google Play), but Google has said that it plans to expand this search capability to other services as well.
Lenovo, Acer, and ASUS are all giving a three-month membership to GeForce Now RTX 3080 tier as well as three months of Amazon Luna+ to ensure that anybody looking at these Chromebooks can start playing right away. The ASUS choice also comes with a complimentary SteelSeries Rival 3 gaming mouse.
In terms of mouse, Google collaborated with SteelSeries, Corsair, and HyperX (as well as Lenovo and Acer) to ensure that their gaming-focused peripherals function with Chromebooks. This involves ensuring that these peripherals’ settings may be fine-tuned in ChromeOS, in certain instances using PWAs.
