abner have you ever had the desire to play android games on your computer no because the games iplay are just touch heavy and honestly i'm more of a touch gamer than than a controller gamer um I prefer PUBG on mobile. Oh, I've been told. I've been explicitly told that countless times. I don't know. Touch just makes more sense to me than... Okay, so... I had Nintendo, not the SP, the Game Boy Advance. I had the Game Boy Advance. I think that was my last physical console or the one.
my formative console, probably. So I'm talking to a true blue mobile gamer, right? That is fascinating to me in and of itself, but continue. Sorry, I interrupted you there. Yeah, no. So yeah, it's like... I don't know, touch controls. I remember playing Deep Space on iOS. Is it Deep Space? The name doesn't ring a bell, but then again, I'm not much of an iOS gamer. I don't know the law.
whatever it's a space station game surviving whatever anyways yeah no so i've been pretty touch like it went from the gameboy advance to the ipod touch and then i mean i nintendo switch i played a lot of breath of the wild and i forgot this just before after i got like an xbox pretty late just to play hayo five right okay Then there's obviously Stadia, where I think I tried to play Destiny 2. Shout out, Kyle. But I don't know. So there's a long sweep of console.
of control traditional physical controllers stuff but it i think the i vote the fastest thing or maybe i've been trained to is like to just like play on the phone It's so much faster to boot. I don't have to sit at the TV, all that kind of stuff. So I think that's why, to me, mobile gaming is so touch. It's like the biggest aspect of it. So you sound exactly like the person who would use Android games on PC and vice versa. Yeah, like you would be the perfect candidate, but...
Before we get into something that you told me, and I'm completely shocked that it's even feasible. So Google's announcing that they're going the opposite way with regards to... PC games coming to Android very soon. Yes. Which to me sounds like the perfect way to do it. That is the best way to do it, right? There's an inevitability to it. Our phones are getting so much more powerful.
credible gpus it's your phone probably has the best screen in your house um that's easy to say for most people so yeah this this makes sense But at the same time, this Prey Games on PC thing, which was first teased in December 21, maybe, earlier. No, it was announced at the Game Awards, so yeah, December. Google made a big push about saying they're bringing Android games to PC.
they've been continuing to update over the years and it's going to exit beta soon it's been in beta for this entire time since the 2022 wider access launch so yeah um That's news, but the news today is that they're also going to announce that PC Native Games... can be distributed to play games on pc so these have no mobile counterparts these are true and true pc the full pc offering not ports or anything like that they're coming to desktop
So I think the thing to zoom out here is that Google has a new gaming store. They're very serious about this, about having Windows. It's Windows gaming. I was going to say more general PC gaming, but I don't think there's enough appetite for the Mac from a market share standpoint. So yeah, I think... The question is, I think Google, I think they've seen that this is profitable, that the iApps are coming in, advertising works.
I think this is why they're so committed to it. I think this is a serious product for them and that they're seeing numbers that justify its continued growth. I think it's really interesting to... I would love to speak to the person who is predominantly playing Android games on the PC. I can understand why some people would do it, and I know there's a lot of, you alluded to, used touchscreens.
there's a lot more touchscreen and kind of two-in-one form factor PCs than there ever has been. And so I guess, I think maybe because I'm the kind of person who would play PC games and Linux. linux games on on steam deck and things like that and i prefer that format and i think that the fact that there's going to be some pc games that make that jump to mobile that's what i'm interested in i think that is
Well, don't get me wrong. I think that you, again, you said it slightly earlier that the graphical prowess of our phones is getting so good now that you can run maybe not the latest generation. PC games on your phone, but you can potentially run, like, 2016, 2015 era games. Yeah, in the case of Android, yeah. But look at iOS.
Assassin's Creed. Yeah, but it was quite scaled back. Yeah, I saw a few videos. I think Digital Foundry does an incredible video detailing it, and it is very, very scaled back. And that's Stranding, is it? Is that right? No, one of those games. Yeah, one of those games. But yeah, I think it makes sense. If Apple can do it, Google can definitely do it too. And I think that obviously the fact that there's a huge user base, they're proving that, and I think...
I was confused about the entire thing to begin with, to be honest with you, but I think this kind of proves that if there is a market for Android games on PC, then there's going to be just as big a market in the opposite direction, PC games on mobile. And if they're going to have this program to...
Well, I think, do they say they're going to help people port them over or just make it a lot easier to put PC games on Android or mobile? I think that sounds great. Yeah, there's a program. They started the program to do that with notably the first two games. One of them is Tabs Mobile, the totally accurate battle simulator, which I've played horrible on Switch, though. It's so limited compared to the desktop version.
Yeah, it seems like the perfect candidate, like these fun, playful games that come there. And what was the other one? Sorry. Escapes me. But yeah, that's, yeah, that's the... Yeah, but yeah, it's two games coming this month. They have a third on track. See, I know what this one is. This is Disco Elysium.
And I think it's won countless awards. I think that's like, again, that's a perfect kind of game for it. I think it's a bit more point and click. I haven't actually played it. I've seen a lot of... playthroughs of the game and I think it's kind of like we don't necessarily have these narrative driven games on our mobiles so maybe there's some there's some merit in getting one of the probably the best narrative driven games of the past
four or five years and it's important to emphasize these are mobile optimized there's no weird um controller thing that's required it's it's it's optimized and i think This is tangential to the play games on PC stuff, but I do think that, again, gaming on mobile is a thing that's set in stone. People like it. People enjoy it. And that's going to be here with us for a long time, purely based on the ubiquity of phones. But the PC aspect is a surprise. It's a bit unexpected.
I think they again I think Google must have seen something to justify all this investment and they're going to go stable sometime this year and This effort, this initiative happened in the shadow of Stadia. So I think that's why it ended up Google hasn't... I mean, again, they had an ad at the Game Awards, so they did a big reveal, but I think this year, depending on how big they push it, I think we're really going to learn.
how how invest they are in this i hope so i really hope that this is one of those almost for anyone out there who's a stadia kind of what would we call ourselves we'd call ourselves
I don't know. We've had this void left behind after Stadia. It was the best cloud gaming service in terms of experience. It's a shame that it ended the way it ended. But I think this kind of makes sense if we can... obviously harness the power of that local effectively your local machine that being your android phone it makes sense to do that with regards to certain pc games making that jump and obviously clearly there is a lot of people who are doing it the other way around and it
It boggled my mind initially, but I can kind of understand it a lot more now. As we get, like I say, with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, it's very graphically powerful. I think it has a greater graphical power output than the iPhone. that's a big bonus in and of itself. So, yeah, I'm hoping to see some more games. Maybe we'll see Ubisoft jump on the bandwagon. They're currently in financial difficulties.
they might want a game on one of the biggest platforms in the market. But hopefully we'll see this thing develop. But I thought it was a fascinating thing. I don't think I could ever play Android games on my PC, but the other way around... Yeah, I could definitely see it. I played Stadia on my Pixel 4, I think it would have been, Pixel 4 and Pixel 5. So, yeah, it wouldn't be a great shake for me to go and switch to you playing...
a future Assassin's Creed game or something like that, or even Disco Elysium on my Galaxy S25 or Pixel 9 or Pixel 10, whenever it comes out, I don't know. Yeah. interesting times but it kind of leads me to something else that was we talked about previously with regard to products that technically well they're technically no longer being developed we had the chromecast go out of stock recently
through official channels, Google specifically. But then we've just had an issue over the past couple of weeks where the second-gen Chromecast and certain other Chromecasts and the Chromecast audio are having major outages. and just the audio so started on sunday um it started on sunday and people just couldn't cast because they got this warning message about how the firmware
It implied that the firmware was not properly authorized. But basically, this is a bug. Google has said throughout. But what the implication that people got from that massive, that overly technical... message was that Google was just dropping support for the Chromecast after 10 years and without any much announcement. That's totally not the case. It was a bug.
like you said, ill-timed one because they stopped selling replacements, the obvious replacement, the obviously $50 replacement. But yeah, the Chromecast, 10 years old, the second gen Chromecast and the Chromecast audio. 10 years old this year. It's kind of amazing. It's this old and still working. But anyways, the only Chromecast Google has stopped.
updating is the original one the the one that was shaped like a key and we got no such deprecation announcement from the about these the second gen and the audio so And again, you later found out, it was later confirmed that this is just the bug and Google's not pulling support anytime soon. And honestly, to what you were saying, it reveals how... If it's such ill-timed, like that, the obvious replacement that these people should have converted to is the 29.
that the chromecast uh with google tv hd or the 4k but there was no obvious upgrade path and this tv streamer would have been like if you want to stay in the google ecosystem But $99 versus some people have dozens or half a dozen maybe of these second-gen Chromecasts in their homes. And of course, the Chromecast audio is irreplaceable to some people.
Again, this betrays how Google should have kept something cheaper in the lineup. No, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think this one was a bit of a confusing one because, as you say, the track record...
To be fair with the Chromecast, it's Google's clearly the biggest hardware success. I don't think they would just pull the plug on it. I think mainly because they have these hotel partners. I know they do a thing where you get Chromecasts in hotel rooms, and I'm... pretty sure most of them will be second gen or chromecast ultra maybe um in in some of the hotels i've stayed in they are literally just a second gen chromecast with a housing around it um
And they've been in some hotels I've been to which are ancient. So I can't imagine it. Yeah, I had no doubt in my mind that this wasn't intentional. And I wondered, I think a lot of people were kind of... Trying to say there, yeah, they're cutting it. But at the same time, I think to temper expectations a little bit, like you alluded to, it's a 10-year-old product. Was it October 2013 it was released? 2015. 2015, the second gen.
Yeah, the second gen was... Yeah, I'm thinking of the first gen. So yeah, that length of time to have a product supported, yeah, you could argue that it doesn't need updates anyway, but I guess... It is a success story, even though this is sort of a big blip if worldwide people can't use them. But I don't doubt that it will get fixed. I'm guessing it'll just be a change to the CAS protocol or something like that that will just...
They'll fix it. It won't be difficult for them to update them all at once. But yeah, let's hope it gets resolved quickly because like you say, there isn't an obvious... there isn't an obvious replacement. I think people are going to the Walmart on streamer in the US. Okay. That's around 50 bucks, but it's a real shame that it's not a Google.
I mean, Google TV at the end of the day, that's what Google cares about. But having for the Pixel brand, well, not the Pixel brand, but for made by Google, losing that relationship is a shame. Yeah, it is. It is. And I think... cast is so ubiquitous now. Maybe I don't cast things very often anymore because I...
prefer having the native system running it. But I think for a lot of people out there, casting has become part of their daily existence. So I can understand the frustration. It's a verb. Google, this is one of the more subtle things, but they really captured the...
It's cast and airplay. It's... Yeah, I mean, even with airplay, I think most people would call that cast, right? Cast your screen. I think it does make sense. Yeah, I mean... hopefully like i say it gets resolved pretty quickly but at the very at the very least we know it only affects the second gen chromecast so in theory you could get a used um third gen or newer and have no problems but i
I don't think this will be a problem for much longer if there's as much public outcry about this as there is anything else. Yeah, I think one of the PSAs is not to do a factory reset. I think I remember reading that... That might cause some later issues at some point because it might not get recognized when the fix gets pushed initially. So anyone out there who is having problems with their second-gen Chromecast, hang in there. It will get resolved.
Like I say, you don't necessarily have to put up with it. You can go with a different option because there's a lot of cast-enabled systems out there. So, yeah, just one thing I thought was... Kind of interesting. And it also ties in, weirdly, Chromecast problems all at the same time, not going on sale. And they've literally just pushed the Android 14 update to the Chromecast Google TV, which I'm still waiting for on my own device.
yeah weird timing all around for all of this to have a device going out of stock getting updated previous version or slight a lot older version almost getting bricked temporarily yeah just i don't know it boggles the mind sometimes Yeah, so, yeah, and again, Android 14. Real fine, right? But, yeah, it's Chromecast give a thing.
Google take it. Yeah, Google take it away. Yeah, it is what it is. I know that, have you happened to have the update on your device yet? I know we're both kind of waiting until, okay, have you managed to try it yet? I'm still waiting for it to arrive, actually. Feels the same. So I have to assume this is the last major OS upgrade. Like, I don't think it's going to...
for $15 or $16. I don't think there's another OS upgrade for this. But again, when Google said they're going to stop selling it, they... They're not giving up support on it. Again, we have 10 years of Chromecast already. They're not giving up on this hardware yet, though there are obviously differences in terms of it's running for Android. So I'm sure...
you'll still get updates going forward. So that's promising in that respect. And again, other updates are delivered through app updates, services via the Play Store. I think, 10 years. You think this Chromecast will last 10 years? I mean, it's lasted nearly five.
I think it's lasted nearly five. When did we get it? 2020 alongside the Pixel 5? And mine is running... I still can't believe how well it runs, considering all the issues everyone seemed to point out at launch. On paper, it's really not powerful. On paper, if we start looking at it compared to the competition, it's not a great product.
It genuinely is. I think in 2025, in the lens of this year, I think it's difficult to suggest anyone pick up the Chromecast with a Google TV, HD or 4K or otherwise. But I guess because it's such a low-powered... piece of hardware once you stick a usbc dock into there and get some extra storage in there it changes it entirely it changes the proposition because i'm only really running um youtube most of the time anyway
music through YouTube app on TV. And it does that with aplomb. I've never had any major slowdowns. It's on for... up to eight hours a day in some cases longer if i'm if we're doing a big deep dive into specific android versions and it's never i cannot hand on heart say it's never really let me down so i'm as disappointed as anyone it's discontinued but
i think getting android 14 is it's a big deal for a five year old product i think um i did it launch with android 9 i can't even remember now actually what it launched with but Yeah, Android TV is a great platform and Google TV is solid. But I guess when you look at it from an update perspective, this is a product that still is going to make money for Google in terms of the ads.
out there and people being able to consume those and they'll have data on that for the actual tvs and stuff so i don't doubt that they will support it for as long as the first and second gen chromecasts because There is clearly money still being made from these products. I can't imagine they would just completely discontinue them when there were millions out there in the wild.
It poses the other question that we had in the previous episode. Do we get a smaller version of the TV streamer? I think probably in the future still. I'm still almost adamant that they need a smaller device. I hope it's a dongle because as we've seen though. over the past few months people the dongle works in terms of people not wanting another thing underneath their TV they want something subtle and hidden it's a form factor that works
Yeah, I'm still thinking about picking a few up just for travel purposes because once they're set up, it's easy to go. You can create a hotspot and you're winning, if that makes sense. But yeah, Android 14. I've not tried it yet. You said you had it installed, but I can't imagine there's going to be much in terms of the actual experience that we get. I mean, it's going from Android 12 to Android 14. That's a pretty huge jump for any device. But for me, I'm just hoping it...
maybe improves um a few little things like maybe frees up a little bit of extra on device storage but i've i'm kind of past that now i think it it does what it does i'm going to continue to use it on my tv on a daily basis and use the tv streamer on main living room TV, but yeah, it's a sad day. I think it probably does signify the end of an era. Android 14 is probably a good way to end it with the Chromecast. And that kind of...
leads me to ask a question that's deeply tied to something else that's happened this week. Do you think we'll see more Gemini integrations with the Chromecast as these updates roll out? Do you think that's it? Google has almost said, right, we're not going to have Gemini integration with the Chromecast now, because I know there was rumors of it at some point, or is that just a TV streamer and newer versions of Google TV hardware?
Again, it comes down to how Google Assistant, it's Gemini LRM-powered Google Assistant. That oddity would suggest that... Yes, you do get it since it's a server-based approach. And if the Nest Mini is getting it, the Chromecast Shares hack can power it too. So I would say we do get those meaningful updates. Again, stuff like any UI updates, I'm sure the Google TV powered Chromecast will still be getting these new features for the foreseeable.
yeah yeah well i mean let's hope we can only hope that it's going to happen but let's let's let's talk about the biggest one probably the biggest change this week and i think this is we're talking gemini again which I don't know. I'm a little bit Gemini'd out, I'm not going to lie, but this is a really big change to how the free tier works and the accessibility of certain functionalities. I think this could be one of the biggest game changers for Gemini.
probably over the next six months in terms of giving people access to those gems. I think the gems could be the... For a lot of people, it could replace a lot of app subscriptions. I don't know. Tell me what you think. So, yeah, Gemini... So, yeah, the most important thing is two previously Gemini Advanced features are going free. gems like you said that you make custom versions of gemini for specific tasks you give it a name you provide instructions you can upload files it should reference and
It's a chatbot in another sense. It's the promise of chatbots with really good LLMs. So that's there. The other big thing is deep research in which you can... It's Google's first agentic feature that you give it a task, it searches the web for you, and it writes a report. These two are powered by Flash.
a 2.0 flash thinking experimental, which is their first reasoning model that can show you its thoughts. That's always still trippy to me when you can see the reasoning that this... this lm goes through to get to its answer um that's coming to deep research and it's rolling out starting free access is rolling out starting today um the other thing i would say is uh
The other big aspect of today's news is an upgraded version of 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental. It gets faster, it gets more efficient. but also it gets access to Gemini extensions which are now called Gemini apps and you can upload files to it so honestly it looks like that 2.0 flash thinking, it really looks like it's going to be the base model going forward. There are true improvements that you get by this reasoning.
by having it show its thinking. And I do think that, I don't know, by 3.0 or whatever, then by the next one, I think this becomes the base model.
the the gemini app um yeah so that that's uh that's a big update to flash thinking and it's still experimental it's not rolling out yet which i think some people expected it to by now but i guess maybe that's uh in the near term maybe i don't know probably just about i have to imagine just before io it's done um it's finalized it definitely feels like it definitely feels like one of those things they would push
as soon as they they can physically get it ready because i i mean just just speaking from some i'm guessing i feel like i'm speaking on behalf of other people that sometimes you've seen the reasoning of um the llm and The broader term AI is kind of nice because it almost demystifies it a little bit. It doesn't feel like you're asking something and you just get an output and you don't understand why, and then the output doesn't make sense. I think this might give more...
It might put more trust in Gemini as an actual tool to give you the reason of why certain things are done. And I've not used it extensively, I must admit. But when I've done things like, oh, create me a menu or on a specific food type, and it'll say certain things, and I used one of the tests.
test options that they said to try um i think one of them was something like i'm creating a new youtube channel and i added an extra one like in the sports niche give me some first the first three video ideas i should do and it gave me some pretty sensible sensible responses and i think it makes instead of just saying do these or here's three ideas it gives you the reasoning for those which i think is
Yeah, it was interesting to see why it was like, okay, there is a lot of these type of videos out there. Try and avoid them. It's a difficult space to get into if you're a brand new channel. And I'm like, that might actually be really, really helpful to people who... who are actually using the research function for the reason why. They're like, oh, that does make more sense. And it gives it more credibility, which is always nice. I think AI in general is a murky world.
i think to a lot of people and having some sort of google probably can be if they can be as as uh open about certain things as possible. I think that's only going to be a good thing because whether we like it or not, I think AI is... We're all in AI's world. Is it we're all in AI's world?
I'm going to butcher it. I'm not even going to say it. So, yeah, it's AI's world and we're all living in it. That's it. Sorry. Got there in the end. But, yeah, I think that's how it feels at this moment in time anyway. Have you tried any of the service?
the reasoning style things with these experimental ones and seeing a difference because I know it's just rolling out as we speak but I feel like it does feel a bit faster already it is I do think that the base of 2.0 flash is what most people should be using in terms of it's it's a speediest thing um pro can be an overkill when um if you just want the fastest possible answer um The thing that I'm looking forward to trying is this personalization model that uses your Google search history to...
get your preferences, basically, and inform the response that it gives. An example is trip planning and factoring your traits, your preferences, that kind of stuff. And it will soon expand to YouTube, which I assume taking advantage of YouTube's watch history to know what you like. This personalization model, it's clear that it's...
It's early days in that eventually it has to be integrated back into the main thing. Right now, it's experimenting through these models that are labeled experimental. But I think the goal we're waiting for is one model that does everything. And I don't know. I feel like at this point, that's Gemini 3.0. This generation is probably will be served by... continue to see these variants until we get one big model at the end of the day yeah this um
Again, I'm going to try all these out a little bit more and see what the situation is. I think that the personalisation thing that you alluded to is really fascinating. Obviously, you can tie things into Google Photos, which is going to be really strange. And seeing the examples was...
was very interesting i know they showed some more they showed some in the past already but when they do come to fruition i think that these are the kind of things that maybe people who were looking at apple intelligence and were overawed with that this feels like an actual act
actualization of that a little bit more because it is getting that true context and obviously we'll see more plugins and extensions like you say and apps or whatever they're whatever google decides to call them that week um but yeah gemini is big upgrades really considering it's free tiers i think you do get a lot of benefits with the advance but i think this maybe would it's probably well timed because i know a lot of people are coming
in the next few months towards the end of their free 12 months of the Gemini advance plan with the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL and 9 Pro Fold. So maybe getting all of their ducks in a row. People can switch to the free tier and not feel as kind of short-changed as much because it's free at the end of the day. Yeah, it's a good play. Yeah, I kind of was thinking about that on the fly, but yeah.
I know it's been Gemini heavy once again, guys. Hopefully you've enjoyed this little deep... It's not deep dive. It's kind of a little bit of... skirting around gemini again uh we will have more android 16 beta coverage in the coming days because i know that that is google publicly announced it was coming today as we're recording this so yeah we Haven't seen it yet. We're excited to see what happens with it. Maybe we'll see some bigger changes.
I'm on the fence there. But yeah, stick around for that. We will very much be informing you of all the little intricacies of Android 16 Beta 3 and everything else that comes up in the interim. Thanks for joining me again, Abner. This has been a little bit of a different one, a little bit more, almost like negging on the Chromecast a little bit. But yeah, episode 45. Thanks, guys. And I will speak to you soon. Bye.