Google and several laptop manufacturers have teamed up for an announcement this morning that will excite some and puzzle others: you can now buy a gaming Chromebook.
RGB gaming Chromebooks have arrived
Actually, you can buy three. Starting today, you can order Acer’s Chromebook 516 GE for $649.99, Lenovo’s IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook for $599, and Asus’ Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip for a to-be-announced price. These are Chromebook models specifically built and marketed for gaming.
What’s a bit counterintuitive about these “gaming” machines is that they, being Chromebooks, do not have discrete GPUs. We generally don’t consider a laptop to fall into the “gaming” category if it only has integrated graphics (and even today’s entry-level GPUs are a tough sell for many gamers).
Google’s intention here is that you will game on these Chromebooks using Nvidia’s GeForce Now service, which will come preinstalled. (RIP Stadia.) This platform can, theoretically, bring the performance of an RTX 3080, including bells and whistles like ray tracing, to machines that don’t have the hardware to produce it themselves (a Chromebook with integrated graphics, for example) . It’s “a great technology to make it feel like you’re playing on a local computer,” Phil Eisler, the head of GeForce Now, told The Verge last year.
Chrome OS enthusiasts can take advantage of other cloud gaming services as well, including Xbox Cloud Gaming and Amazon’s Luna (if they’re among the five people who use that regularly). It is, of course, a bit awkward that this announcement comes right after Google’s cancellation of its