For a long time now, Google has been playing around with the idea of streaming Android apps, in the same way that we’re now used to streaming music on our smartphones. The idea being that users looking for a particular app would be able to give it a try or access specific data inside of the app without having to install the entire thing. Google has been working on this for years now, and during their Google I/O event back in May of this year, the announcement that it runs on much older versions of Android pretty much confirms how long they’ve been working on this technology. While select apps were streaming from search results from Google, it looks as if the feature is about to go live inside of the Play Store, as a game has recently been spotted offering a “Try Now” option inside of the Play Store.
As many users are reporting, it appears as though the game, which is “Ticket to Ride” works for a little while and then pops up with a “Streaming session incurred an error”. This could be because the feature is set to go live later today during Google’s Pixel launch, or it could be that Google and their developer partners still have kinks in the system to work out. Whether or not this will work with other games is still up in the air, but it appears as though the general length of a trial is 10-minutes, which is a decent enough demo for people to decide whether or not it’s worth buying or downloading in full. Where this sort of functionality will come in handy is of course for large games that take a long time to download before players can even play them to get a feel for what they’re like.
This is the sort of functionality that has been coming for a long time and it’s nice to finally see it start to become available for users all over the world. Whether or not Google makes some noise about this during the event later today is anyone’s guess, but we’re hoping to hear a little more about it shortly.
