Google is reportedly close to realising its ambitions to make viable gaming Chromebooks.
A new report on 9to5Google claims that a new generation of game-bred Chrome OS device could be upon us – and it’s those darned flashy RGB keyboards that have given the game away.
It’s been noted that a change to the Chrome OS code incorporates a new feature flag to “enable RGB Keyboard support on supported devices”. A little more digging has revealed that under the new RGB keyboard support, each key can be customised to your specific combination of red, green, and blue.
You might think that this is a fairly innocuous new feature, and could simply be a means of expanding support for external keyboards. However, the report has established that this is a feature that’s being specifically geared towards a small handful of unreleased Chromebooks.
Three related codenames have been identified with this RGB keyboard feature: Vell, Taniks, and Ripple. The first two are said to refer to Quanta and Lenovo respectively, which look set to expand their gaming laptop efforts into the Chromebook sphere.
The latter codename, Ripple, is said to be the internal name for a detachable keyboard, suggesting a gaming-focused Chrome OS tablet could be in the works. It’s been no secret that Google is looking to bring Steam support to Chrome OS, while last year saw a Geforce Now update enabling high-end game streaming on a Chromebook.
We’ve seen a similar concept over in the Windows gaming world with the Asus ROG Flow Z13, which was announced at CES 2022.
