Googles secret plan to organize games for play on any screen – The Verge

Apples Mac has long been an afterthought for the video game industry, and few think of Google as a games company despite running Android, one of the biggest game platforms in the world. But Google had a plan to change those things in October 2020, according to an explicitly confidential 70-page vision document dubbed Games Futures.

The need-to-know document, which was caught up in the discovery process when Epic Games hauled Apple into court, reveals a tentative five-year plan to create what Google dubbed the worlds largest games platform. Google imagined presenting game developers with a single place they can target gamers across multiple screens including Windows and Mac, as well as smart displays all tied together by Google services and a low-cost universal portable game controller that gamers can pair with any device, even a TV.

Theres some reason to be skeptical that this document reflects Googles true direction: Brought to you by partially funded and i have a dream productions, an early slide reads. And we know that Google lost some of its gaming ambition this February, when it decided to pull the plug on its original game studios for Google Stadia.

And yet, the heavily redacted document suggests that to start down this path, Google would first bring emulated, native and streamed games to Windows, something that no longer sounds far-fetched: Microsoft just announced in June that Android apps are coming to Windows 11, admittedly with Amazons Appstore as the initial partner.

If Google is actually going in this direction, you can get a glimpse of what to expect in the full 70-page document embedded below. It includes how Google would try to establish its Play Games brand as an indie game destination, bring roughly 100 of the best of Android mobile games to PC, require developers to support controllers and multiple platforms, and mandate minimum prices so it can attract super-premium games to the platform. Theres a lot that hasnt been redacted, and its ambitious stuff.

And if youd like more where that came from, you can find our whole list of the best emails from the Epic v. Apple trial right here.

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Googles secret plan to organize games for play on any screen - The Verge