TL; DR
- Rosen Sharma, CEO of Android emulator BlueStacks, made some comments on the news regarding Android apps working on Windows 11.
- “It’s not that easy for newbies,” said Sharma, referring to Microsoft.
- Sharma also points out that developers need to put in a lot of work to make things run smoothly on Windows, while emulators don’t.
One of the questions we asked ourselves when we saw this news was how this would affect Android emulators. We reached out to one of the most popular emulator companies, BlueStacks, for a comment.
BlueStacks CEO welcomes change, but with moderate expectations
The company’s CEO, Rosen Sharma, gave us two answers. The first assured us that the company welcomes Android apps that work on Windows, despite their obvious threat to BlueStacks:
BlueStacks pioneered running Android apps on PC. We believe that devices and operating systems should not be a limitation for Android users and gamers. The news from Microsoft is a great endorsement that Android apps will run on Windows.
Following that response, Sharma stated that, in his opinion, we should have dampened expectations for Microsoft’s performance with Android apps on Windows.
We are experts in Android mobile gaming and have a deep understanding of basic issues like virtualization to everyday experiences like keyboard and mouse support. We have developed an app container technology that is based on Android and solves the problems mentioned above. It’s not that easy for newbies. First of all, the apps need to be usable on different types of Windows computers that don’t support touch support, computers with different drivers and graphics cards around the world. An app that might work in the US might not work in Brazil. Developers have to do a lot of work to get them to work on Windows 11. This is not the case with BlueStacks. There is also the question of who is offering support.
Sharma brings up some interesting points here. Even if Windows 11 natively supports Android apps, the developers of those apps inevitably have to work harder on these apps than before. They might just need to tweak a few things to make it work well on Windows, but some others might need to make drastic overhauls.
Connected: BlueStacks 5: Everything You Need To Know About Android Emulator
One of the main features of BlueStacks is keyboard and mouse integration, which gives you a new way to play Android games that are mostly touch-based. It’s unclear whether and how Microsoft would take on similar functions – or would the game’s developer have to do so?
There are certainly many questions surrounding this message. Fortunately, we don’t have to wait long for Microsoft to bring out developer versions of Windows 11. Hopefully we will have some answers to our questions by then.
