First look video: Project Stream beta of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on the Pixelbook

I got into the Project Stream beta over the weekend and finally got a chance to try it. If you’re not familiar with Project Stream, it’s a Google effort to bring video game streaming to the Chrome browser. Of course, that means any Chromebook should be supported since the cloud is doing the heavy lifting.

I thought my Xbox controller would work — as you’ll see in the video — but it turns out I don’t have the right one. As a result, I had to use my keyboard, which is not ideal. At least not for me, anyway.

Overall, this looks very promising as long as you have a 25 Mbps or better internet connection. Frame rates looks pretty good as did the 1080p video quality. Input lag could use some improvement but again: This is a beta. My hope is that Google improves that in the coming months so the Chromebook becomes even more of a Swiss Army knife: A desktop browsing machine that runs Android apps, Linux apps, and dual boots into Windows 10 for those that need it. Adding a streaming console game experience would be icing on the cake.

About the author

Kevin C. Tofel has covered technology since 2004. He's used ChromeOS since Google debuted the CR-48 in 2010, reviewing dozens of Chromebooks since then. He worked for Google's Chrome Enterprise team from 2016 to 2017, supporting the launch of Android app support. In his free time, he uses Chromebooks to learn software engineering at Launch School. In 2019, Kevin joined the CS Curriculum Committee at his local community college.