Chrome 94 will bring something new to gaming

Google recently announced a new beta for its browser. Chrome 94 will bring a lot of new features, some of which are geared towards gaming. We take stock.

What if a web browser was little more than a web browser? Google must have asked this question at some point in Chrome’s development. The versions passing, the browser has become more complete and it has mainly tried to offer new things.

This will also be the case with Chrome 94. As Google explains in its announcement, this new version will integrate technologies geared towards gaming.

Chrome 94 brings new APIs

Among these is WebCodecs, an API geared towards developers. An API allowing in particular to better manage the encoding and decoding of videos and audio.

To better manage these operations, but above all to make them less resource intensive and significantly reduce latency.

The other technology is WebGPU, another API that allows developers to leverage the power of a computer’s GPU. An operation close to that of a DirectX 12 or a Metal. To schematize and keep it simple, with it, developers will be able to interact more easily with the graphics card or the GPU integrated into the motherboard of the computer.

Technologies to better manage video, sound and games

Ultimately, these two technologies will help developers offer new streaming experiences. This also applies to cloud gaming as well as to streaming multimedia content.

On the other hand, Google evokes an experimental phase which will continue until next year. For the moment, it is therefore difficult to assess the repercussions that Chrome 94 will have on the market, or even if the developers will really use these technologies in their projects.

Now, it will be recalled that Google itself is very interested in these subjects. Between Stadia and YouTube, we can even say that he opened his arms to them. These implementations should therefore also allow Googlers to improve their tools.