The folks at BlueStacks have been offering tools that let you run Android apps and games on Windows and Mac computers for years… but in order to do that you’ve needed to install the company’s Android emulator on your computer.

Now BlueStacks is taking aim at Android game developers with a new tool called BlueStacks Inside. It’s an SDK that will let developers submit existing Android games to Windows PC gaming platforms like Steam or Discord.

Mobile gaming has become big business in recent years, and we’ve even seen device makers start designing phones specifically for gamers. But odds are your PC still has more horsepower than your smartphone.

According to VentureBeat, BlueStacks has already partnered with game developers including KOG, Funplus, and Fabled Game Studio to use the new SDK to bring their games to PC.

The upside for developers is that they don’t have to go out of their way to develop for two different platforms — just create an Android version of your game and BlueStacks Inside will turn it into something that can run on PC.

The upside for PC gamers could be an influx of new games that might not otherwise have been available… although the downside is that this could also bring an influx of the free-to-play games filled with in-game purchases that are so common on mobile devices.

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14 replies on “BlueStacks Inside could bring more Android games to PCs”

  1. My leisure time is to play games using either my phone or my computer. I had some trouble at first but after I used website pin bluestacks download from websitepin site, I truly enjoyed playing without hassle. Hope you’ll do the same.

  2. I’ve found MemuPlay to be a good for Android games on PC.

    I play War Robots on it, the experience is quite good and far superior to playing directly on an Android device.

    BlueStacks has run like crap for me in the past, when it was stripped and free. Next time I tried it, it was bloated and laggy, and underwhelming with massive ad spam.

    MemuPlay has some ad and monetization in it – as app recommendations – but none of it is intrusive nor does it harm the experience.

    1. Without mentioning what type of PC it’s referring to, Bluestacks claims
      that a PC running it is faster than the Samsung Galaxy 10,
      which is saying a lot. I would say that would be true for an 8th gen
      quad core Intel Core i5 with 8 GB RAM and an SSD. (Bear in mind
      that Bluestacks is funded by Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Samsung, and
      has support from Google, since the Bluestacks emulator includes
      the Google Play Store.)

      1. It’s a bold statement since it’s essentially a VM. Hardware acceleration is an issue as you have to translate mobile gpu and arm instructions to desktop gpu and x86 instructions.

  3. Very few android games were ever worth playing during the period when I actually played android games. Most of the big titles are always online pay-to-win or grind to death stuff. I don’t see how these will attract people to play them on a desktop environment especially considering the graphics power difference between the two platforms.

  4. Fundamentally, this seems like just another layer of bloat, and another advancement towards authoritarian centralization of how software is developed and distributed that users didn’t need and nobody deserved.
    But then again, I’ve been assuming that no games for cell phones were ever worth playing since microtransactions began in earnest. So what do I know.

    1. Right now if you want to develop a game that works on Windows and Android you have a choice of having two completely separate code bases, using the Unity engine (with a lot of separate code as well), or using something that isn’t really appropriate for most game development (Xamarin or one of the JavaScript/HTML engines). It’s hard to see how something that gives developers another cross platform option is authoritarian.

      If anything, more cross platform development should (in theory) make it easier for users to choose alternate platforms. If the apps I want to use all run on Android, Windows, iOS, MacOS, Chrome, and Linux then that’s one less factor I have to take into account when deciding on a platform.

      1. What I mean is, if you put your app on a centralized distribution service, you have to play by the service provider’s rules. I’m not talking about keeping up with changes so your software keeps working for new customers. It’s more about what content you can and can’t have. The more services you distribute with, the more and stricter rules you have to abide by.
        Maybe I’m a bad person for having to worry about that.
        But in reality…we’re all bad people, to someone or something.

    2. Most of my favourite games are on Android. The micro payments are generally optional and not paying just means the game lasts longer.

      1. I play Asphalt 9 and Mortal Kombat mostly with little bit of SimCity. What are your fav games, would like to try out some good ones.

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