Adam Birney / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google’s starting to support games on Android Auto and Automotive.
- Android Auto game support was first spotted late last month, alongside the release of Android Auto 14.1 beta.
- It turns out this beta isn’t needed at all, and you can game on Android Auto 14 stable when using an Android 15 phone.
Cars are a whole lot more than just a way for us to get from point A to point B, and considering how much time some of us spend in them, it shouldn’t be any surprise that in-vehicle entertainment is a major priority. These days, car dashboards are just as connected and hooked in to streaming services as our phones, but there’s long been one entertainment option they lacked: gaming. Google’s recently started a concerted effort to do something about that, and we’re now getting some new details about the arrival of gaming on Android Auto.
At the time, this support was first spotted arriving alongside Google beginning to distribute Android Auto 14.1 as a beta release. And if you’re maybe a little apprehensive of running a beta build, it looked like you were going to have to wait.
Well, it turns out that’s not actually the case at all. 9to5Google has now been able to confirm that gaming is supported just fine on Android Auto 14 stable, and you don’t have to be involved with the beta at all. Instead, there’s another requirement at play here that we weren’t even aware of: the phone you’re using needs to run Android 15.
That’s possibly a little frustrating for a lot of people who were looking forward to a little light gaming in their cars, as right now Android 15 is still far from pervasively available as an update for older hardware — even if that’s a situation that should be rapidly improving, very, very soon.
