Google Play Games is the internet giant’s official platform that brings Android games to PCs. Released in 2022, it offers more than 3000 games today. But Google wants more and just announced it will natively support Windows games.

There’s no need for a PC gaming platform. There are half a dozen major digital stores where Valve’s Steam excels; own stores from major video game distributors and high-profile on-demand services from other players who dominate the PC gaming segment, see Microsoft Game Pass or NVIDIA GeForce Now. Others, like Google, also aspire to a piece of the big PC gaming pie.

Google Play Games is an ideal platform for running Android games on PC. It is directly and officially supported by the person responsible for the mobile operating system, the hardware requirements are available for every modern PC and they work quite well due to the use of virtualization. But they are still Android games, that is, it is meant to be played on mobile devices and not on PCs. Fine for testing or general use, but big PC gamers are looking for something else. And Google intends to host them on its own platform.

Therefore, she announced a number of innovations in the area Google for Games Developer Summit where the significant expansion of the platform beyond mobility stands out, “making it easier to scale and grow your cross-platform games” on mobile devices, tablets, Chromebooks, and key to the lion’s share: Windows PCs.

Google will add support for publishing native PC games. This will expand the platform, which until now has been devoted exclusively to Android titles. Google announced the first added games as Solo Leveling: Arise, Lineage2M, Odin: Valhalla Rising, Genshin Impact and Dragonheir: Silent Gods.

After the Stadia fiasco, it’s early to know the extent of Google’s ambitions in PC gaming and beyond, but adding Windows games could get Google involved. position to compete with digital stores established as Steam, Epic Games Store or GOG Galaxy. The company isn’t asking for an exclusive commitment, but rather game developers who want to include their titles in their store. We’ll see.