Steam Games Are Heading To Chrome OS Starting With These Chromebooks
Yeah, you read that right, Steam on Chromebooks. This shocking little change is probably not as big of a surprise as you might think, as it was confirmed some time ago. Lately, Chromebooks have been receiving significant hardware improvements, such as running 11th generation Intel processors, and they have allowed the ability to run native Linux applications for some time. Add in the fact that there are iterations of the devices that now come with RGB keyboards gaming would be a logical step for them to take.
The eagle-eyed folks at 9to5Google discovered changes in a recent code merge that includes language for supported device models. When referring to Borealis, the codename for Steam support on ChromeOS, several model names were listed. The model names are delbin, voxel, volta, lindar, elemi, volet, and drobit.
Supposedly these allowed models will see the Borealis icon based on what the code says. Additionally, right now the code indicates that only 11th generation Intel chips that are i5 or i7 are supported at the moment. However, there are references to possible support on Intel 10th gen, and there are numerous contributions to this portion of the project from NVIDIA staff as well. File that under "T" for 'Things that may you go hmm'.
The models that supposedly will first support the feature are as follows.
- Voxel - Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (CP713-3W)
- Volta - Acer Chromebook 514 (CB514-1H)
- Volet - Acer Chromebook 515
- Delbin - Asus Chromebook Flip CX5 (CX5500)
- Drobit - Asus Chromebook CX9 (CX9400)
- Elemi - HP Pro C640 G2 Chromebook
- Lindar - Unknown
Will Chromebooks become the new home to gamers in the future? Probably not, but you can already use some cloud game streaming services, like Stadia or NVIDIA's GeForce Now, in a browser even without native Steam support. So if you're just itching to PC-game on a small portable laptop, you could always just do that and you wouldn't even need that strong of a processor.
There is a hint of the market in this as well, thanks to Chromebooks almost becoming ubiquitous with schooling a lot of the target market for gaming, children already have access to such devices and probably some experience in repairing them.
