Chrome 94 beta tests some next-gen tech for gaming in your browser

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google’s Chrome Beta 94 announcement mentions that Google is implementing some new web standards that could make browser-based gaming experiences even better. The soon-to-be-released WebCodecs could help make cloud gaming easier and faster, while the experimental WebGPU could make it easier for developers of games that run in the browser to tap into your computer’s power.

WebCodecs is an API designed to give developers better access to the video encoding/decoding codecs that are already bundled with your browser, which figure out what to do with video streams. While there are already methods of getting video to play in Chrome, they’re not necessarily designed for things like cloud gaming, which is best when it’s as low-latency as...