After becoming a deadly rival for Microsoft and Apple, Chrome OS has always been a fantastic choice, especially in enterprise and education markets. Google is now reportedly planning to make its Chrome OS devices more popular among the gaming community, by introducing a new “Game Mode” for Chromebooks tied to the supposed Steam client, “Borealis”.
No doubt that Chromebook users can already run games, but they still don’t have hundreds of games available on Steam. And this new dedicated ‘Game Mode’ for Chrome OS could be the key to bring those games soon.
As reported by ChromeUnboxed, a new Chromium Gerrit commit has suggested that Google is working on a new “Game Mode” for Chromebook, which will be triggered when the “Borealis,” window is made full-screen or loses the focus. Once enabled this mode might provide users pointer lock, enable performance enhancements for gaming, or even give access to tools like messaging, screen recording, and more.
Now you would be wondering what “Borealis” means here, it is a specialized Steam container (codenamed as “Borealis”), for bringing Steam support to Chrome OS. Google and Valve have been working on this for over a year now – to run Steam games directly on Chrome OS and give its users a much-improved gaming experience.
As mentioned in starting, Chromebook users can already run games and have access to Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce NOW. And after adding a native Steam client and new Game Mode its users will definitely get a huge boost in the high-end gaming experiences for their Chromebooks.