Google is Reportedly Testing Bringing Games to YouTube

After Google shut down its Stadia cloud gaming service earlier this year, the company has reportedly another online gaming product in the pipeline. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company has started testing a new “Playables” service on YouTube, which will provide access to games from a web browser or the YouTube mobile apps.

“The games available for testing include titles such as Stack Bounce, an arcade game in which players attempt to smash layers of bricks with a bouncing ball, according to a screenshot of the product. Users would be able to play the games instantly via the YouTube site on web browsers or the YouTube app via devices running Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS mobile systems,” according to an email seen by the WSJ.

Gaming videos are a popular category on YouTube, which is also competing with Twitch as a live streaming platform. Google had big ambitions with Stadia and managed to bring a couple of big blockbuster games to the cloud gaming service, but YouTube Playables seemed to be more targeted at casual gamers.

“Gaming has long been a focus at YouTube,” a company spokesman said in a statement shared with the WSJ. “We’re always experimenting with new features, but have nothing to announce right now.”

It’s still not clear if a company like Apple would allow the YouTube iOS app to provide access to games. Apple prevented Microsoft to make Xbox Cloud Gaming available on iOS via the Xbox Game Pass app, as the company required Microsoft to review each game and make them available on the App Store instead. As a result, Microsoft had no choice but to make Xbox Cloud Gaming only available via the web on iOS.