In recent years, we’ve seen an explosion in the number of apps that emulate PC games on your smartphone. You may be familiar with GameHub and Winlator, but GameNative is one you may not have heard of.
This open-source up-and-comer has just had a big update that means it works with Google Pixel phones, meaning you can now try running your PC games on your Pixel 10.
Gaming wherever, whenever
Prime-time gaming has moved from a static and rather large box in our living room, to handheld devices like the Switch 2 and Steam Deck, and now it’s ready to come to your smartphone.
Gaming on smartphones is nothing new by any means, but we’re moving away from Angry Birds, and more towards the games you love and recognize from consoles and PCs. This is thanks to increasing processor speeds and apps like GameHub, and now, GameNation.
GameNative is a bit of a newcomer to that scene, having really only just come into any sort of prominence, but it show a lot of promise. The latest beta release, 0.9.0, contains a lot of additions that benefit the Pixel 10 in particular, but also other phones, including additional support for Samsung Dex.
With the latest release, GameNation now works a lot better with the Pixel 10’s PowerVR GPU. Due to its prominence in the market, it’s common for emulators like this to focus on the Adreno GPUs in Snapdragon processors, which tends to leave Google-built devices in the cold.
Thankfully, that’s not the case for GameNation, making it the PC game emulator of choice if you’re using a Google Pixel 10.
Also included in this new release is support for Samsung Dex and other similar desktop modes. The aim here is to give you a better experience if you’re playing games on your smartphone through your TV, and it tightens up support for keyboard and mouse, and adds a number of other desktop-related tweaks.
There are also some nice new features that aren’t necessarily linked to performance, but add a lot anyway. This comes in the form of Steam Workshop support, battery temperature, Steam download and storage manager pages, and so on.
It’s heartening to see a project like this really start to come into its own, especially when adding support for more and more devices. We’re sure we’ll be hearing more from GameNation in the coming months.