Okay, so I had an interesting question posed to me by a friend looking to design a game on itch.io, and what kind of game I'd like to see on there. My response was....nothing, because I'd never wanna play games from there. I consider browser games to be low quality games, and I havent played them since college. My argument is I could see people with no means to play anything better to play them, but when I think about what's available these days, I literally can't think of a scenario where I'd ever wanna play such games.
Let's talk about this from my perspective:
My history: 35 years of gaming
So I'm in my late 30s and I've been gaming since around....1991....1992...ish. I was like 4 when I started. I started with the game gear and sega genesis and I've been a pretty avid gamer for most of my life. As I see it, there's so many good games I've played over the course of my life that at this point, I just can't see browser gaming as serious gaming. The closest we ever got to that was quake live back around 2010, when Id made quake 3 arena a literal browser game people could play online.
I will admit I did play some browser games in college, like bloons TD and the like, but quite frankly, the big appeal of those was I could play them on school computers, which were very locked down. I couldnt install anything on them, and the only alternative to browser games were sticking old games on a flash drive and playing those, and I did that. I did literally play the likes of Quake 2 and Unreal Tournament 99 on school computers off of a flash drive. All you needed to do was stick the game files on the drive, stick it into the computer and start the exe. Of course, the number of games that could do this was limited, but even then I did find a way to have alternatives to flash games.
But yeah, flash games were popular at the time because...well...we didnt quite have phones as we currently have them yet, it was the late 2000s and smartphones were in their infancy and not widespread yet. Flash games could be run on low end computers with integrated graphics and trust me, IGPs were so bad back in the day many of them couldnt run anything demanding. My home computer could barely run UT99 and quake 3 at the time, although I eventually fixed it up and improved it by adding more RAM and a dedicated GPU. Then I could run stuff up to around 2005 decently. And laptops at the time had horrible intel integrated graphics that was a good 5 years behind the curve graphically. So yeah options were limited. You could run like 90s games on that stuff, maybe early 2000s (and not emulation), but thats about it. You had options, but you kinda ran out fast. And again on school computers they were so locked down your options were truly limited.
Even then, again, I had my ways. My home computer with IGPs could still run very low requirement games and had about as much power as id say...a sega dreamcast. And I could stick a few games on a 1 GB flash drive and play them at school too. But still browser games greatly expanded my options.
But hey, it was the 2000s, and if you were in the 2000s on bad hardware, that's what you had access to. So...flash games became quite popular. But in the year 2026...why would ANYONE wanna play browser games?
Let's go through the various tech devices I have and discuss them, working backwards.
Main gaming PC: i9 12900k, 32 GB DDR5, RX 6650 XT
Yeah I got those 32 GB DDR5, I rich. Actually, I paid about as much for my entire CPU, RAM, mobo combo as the RAM currently costs. Yeah. The joys of upgrading from microcenter in 2023. But yeah, this can run ANYTHING currently. The most demanding game, it'll run it. You might be running on low with upscaling on in the most demanding of situations (looking at you, doom the dark ages), but yeah, they'll run, and that's all that matters. And I have so many games to play I'd never consider gaming on anything else.
Previous PC: i7 7700k, 16 GB DDR4, GTX 1060
So say my PC died and I had to go back to the previous PC. In reality, only a part would die, but still, I would need to go back to some combination of the prior parts, which i still own and keep as backups. What do i lose? Well, I can play anything up to 2022 well enough. 2023 is when "next gen" requirements really went through the roof, so I upgraded my GPU in 2022, and my CPU/RAM in 2023. Going back, my options would be more limited. BF6 might not run well, neither would COD BO7, but I'd expect them to still run in some form. Anything with ray tracing is a no go. VRAM could also kill me here. But still, would I be playing browser games? Nah, I'd be flipping back to slightly older PC games. Or running some current games with lower settings and frame rates. They would be borderline, but they would run.
No GPU: i9 12900k 32 GB DDR5, UHD 770
Say my GPUs died and I had to either go back to the HD 5850 sitting in my attic or use the integrated UHD 770. Id probably opt for the latter at this point given the 5850 hasnt had a driver update in over a decade now and has 1 GB VRAM, and the UHD 770 is still reasonably powerful. What could I run? Apparently quite a lot. Again, it's about as powerful as my old HD 5850. I might have to return to early-mid 2010s games, but that still gives me A LOT to play. I might not be playing BF6, but BF4? Maybe. The fact is, I'd have every game still available to me up through 2015 or so. Which is...quite a lot. Why would I ever play browser games?
I'm not even touching emulation, but yeah, looks like everything up through PS2/Gamecube would be playable if you're into that sort of thing too.
That gives you around 25 years of games of my ~35 years of gaming. Sure you lose the modern stuff, but we got so many eras at this point I still have zero reason to ever touch a browser game.
Dad's laptop: i7 1265u, 8 GB DDR5, Iris XE graphics (but not really)
So I got this one for my dad a few christmases ago as he needed to replace his aging laptop, and I got this bad boy for like $300 from microcenter. So it's a pretty budget laptop. It said it came with Iris XE graphics, but didnt read the fine print and found out that it only gets the full graphical abilities when it has dual channel RAM, which this does not. Still, it can maintain 2/3 of the power without it, having 64 CUs available instead of 96.
I never gamed on it but I estimate its capabilities as being similar to above, where it could probably fluidly run anything up to 2015 or so and maybe low requirement games that are newer. Looking up the XE graphics, this seems to be what it's capable of. So yeah, still giving me fluid details up to 2015 or so, and giving me no reason to play browser games.
i7 7700k, 16 GB DDR4, UHD 630
What about the integrated on my old desktop? I never used it given I had a HD 5850 as a backup, which was on par with the newer UHD 770, but this one was half as powerful. It was on par with the venerated 8800 GT, which was the high end GPU when I was in college everyone coveted, and could run anything up through 2013 well enough to my knowledge. Looking online it still seemed capable enough to run games like Apex legends, overwatch, and GTA 5 at playable framerates. And emulation wise you still have a pretty decent experience it seems. So there you go, it can still game at a standard far higher than the baseline that would be needed for me to seriously play browser games.
A6 3400m, 4 GB DDR3, HD 6520g
I got this laptop back in 2011. It's now 15 years old. It cost around $380 at the time. It had an IGP in it about as powerful as what was in the 360, and this could run virtually all 360/PS3 era PC ports without issue. It's very dated today. But I literally used it for years as a "gaming laptop", kinda fulfilling a similar role the steam deck would now. I cant run anything past 2012ish on it well, but hey, that still gives me a huge backlog of games from the "good old days" of gaming. And yeah, even this was powerful enough for me to do "real gaming" by college standards, and if I had this laptop in college, it would've been on par with some of the gaming laptops my friends had at the time. It could even run Crysis 2! That's how dated the "can it run crysis" meme now is. Because any of the modern integrated chips are on par with the high end chips available to run crysis at the time, and even an old AMD laptop from 2011 could run crysis. Obviously were talking low settings at 1024x600, but it ran. One day, crysis will be the "doom" of "can i get this to run on a toaster oven?" and we are heading toward a world of "yes, yes you can."
So yeah, any modern computing device can run a wealth of games these days. Every modern computing device is a "gaming PC" by like 2009 standards. And that kind of excludes my willingness to play browser games on any of them for the most part.
But let's go further, and look at various mobile devices throughout the years too.
Razer Edge (Snapdragon G3X Gen 1 (aka, a 888+), 6 GB RAM, Adreno 660)
I picked up this handheld for $200 last year. It tears through almost any mobile game at some settings, barring warzone mobile due to its arcane requirements, and it's also an emulation powerhouse. It has access to so many games that it's ridiculous and I'm never board. I can play COD mobile on it, delta force (BF rip off), PUBG mobile, destiny rising, and yeah, even with mobile games, I got access to so many games, and not just games but HIGH QUALITY games that put say, combat arms, which i used to play in college a lot with friends, to shame. Truly, we live in a golden age of gaming, at least if we avoid the dumpster fire that is AAA gaming. We have so many options, and again, I'm kinda focusing on what LOW END devices can do, with smartphones and tablets being relatively "low end" by default.
Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ (Snapdragon 695, 8 GB RAM, Adreno 619)
I got this one for christmas and while nowhere near as powerful as the razer edge, it holds up quite well. It can play most of the same games at lower settings, and can even emulate most of the same games reasonably well. I got the 8 GB version for $180 on sale so yeah, this is what you get at the low end budget level, and this is my daily driver.
Samsung S6 Lite 2020 (Exynos 9611, 4 GB RAM, Mali G72 MP3)
This could also run COD mobile fairly well. Same with PUBG. Same with most google play store slop. More limited options with emulating but it seems to handle up to N64 and Dreamcast fairly well. It kinda fell out of favor for me as a gaming device over time, but still, it was fairly capable.
Huawei Mediapad M3 (Kirin 950, 4 GB RAM, Mali T880 MP4)
It had similar performance as the S6 Lite. only reason I bought the S6 Lite was the battery aged badly and by the 3 year mark I was getting 2-4 hour battery life with the thing shutting off on its own with battery life as high as 50-60%. But power wise? It was almost as powerful as the samsung tablet and equally as capable barring OS limitations.
Asus Memopad 7 (Some intel chip, 1 GB RAM, intel IGP)
This was my first dip into android gaming and it sucked. I wish I got the Nexus 7 instead. It lagged doing ANYTHING. Still, I could run classic sonic games, doom, quake 1-3 and even crazy taxi on the thing, as well as a lot of casual games at the time that were borderline equivalent of browser games. So yeah, that's how far back you kinda need to get for me to wanna play a browser game. Even then, I had options.
Which makes me go back to browser gaming on PC. Let's talk the old old stuff.
2010 HP laptop (Intel Celeron 900, 3 GB RAM, GMA 4500)
I got this one for like $200-300 on sale back in the day. It was crap. I could barely run anything on it. But I could still run early 2000s games like Quake 3, Command and conquer red alert 2 and generals, and even some stuff like half life 2, portal 1, and battlefield 2. Remember, anything can be a gaming PC if you try hard enough. But yeah, this is about the level where I'd wanna play browser games.
2005 HP desktop Mark II (Athlon XP 3200+, 2 GB DDR1 RAM, HD 3650)
This is my old college era desktop after upgrading, and it was more capable than the above laptop. It ran all of the above but also stuff like FEAR, as well as borderline running TF2 and BF2142 at like 15 FPS. Again, anything can be a gaming PC if you try hard enough.
2005 HP desktop Mark I (Athlon XP 3200+, 512 MB RAM, Via/S3G Unichrome IGP)
*gets cross out* STAY BACK! STAY BACK!
Yeah. This was HORRIBLE. Couldnt run anything past 2000 really. Quake 3, UT99, and Red Alert 2 is what it topped out at. And it couldnt run ANYTHING really. I mean when I found a game that ran i played the crap out of it no matter how bad it was. Like Soldier Front, aka rip off counter strike full of hackers and lag. Or soldat.
Again, anything can be a gaming PC if you try hard enough, but this one really struggled to run anything. Anyway, given my options, browser games used to be some of my only options. I guess his is once again where I would say I would play browser games.
Can modern browser games even run on such ancient hardware?
So yeah, we get it. You need to go back 15 years of hardware evolution and be stuck on some POS system with integrated graphics from the literal 2000s to wanna play browser games. but can modern browser games even run on those systems?
Googling it, I get this:
There areno universal system requirements for itch.io itself, as it's a platform; instead, requirements depend on individual games, but most are indie titles with low specs (e.g., Windows 7+, 4GB RAM, basic GPU). The itch.io client runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, while game specs vary from simple browser-based HTML5 games to more demanding Unity or Godot engine titles needing DirectX 10+, SSE2 support, and decent GPUs. Always check the specific game's page for its particular requirements.For the itch.io Client (Launcher):
- Operating Systems: Windows, macOS, Linux.
- Functionality: It's a basic application to download and manage games, requiring minimal resources beyond your browser.
For Games on itch.io (Examples):
- Very Basic (HTML5/PICO-8): Can run in a browser or on older hardware.
- Unity Engine (Common): Windows 7 SP1+, macOS 10.11+, Ubuntu 12.04+, GPU with DX10 (Shader Model 4.0).
- More Demanding Games:
- Windows 10/11 (64-bit).
- Intel Core i3/i5 or equivalent.
- 4GB - 8GB RAM.
- GPU with DX10/11/12 support (e.g., Nvidia GTX 600 series+).
Key Takeaway:
Since itch.io hosts diverse indie games, look at the specific game's page for its minimum and recommended specs (CPU, RAM, Graphics, OS) before downloading, as they differ greatly.
...WTF?
So....basic games, Windows 7, 4 GB RAM...the systems I have used that I WOULD play such games on wouldnt run such games. And then demanding games. i3s and i5s, with 4-8 GB RAM, and a GTX 600 series card.
That's...ridiculous. I didnt mention it since the UHD 770 discussions covered it, but my original gaming PC out of college had a phenom II X4 965, 4 GB RAM, and a HD 5850, and that's older than what's mentioned. They want like a literal gaming PC from 2012 just to run crappy browser games.
And to give you an idea of what THOSE can run, well, better than the UHD 770, worse than the 1060. Say an i5 2500k, 8 GB RAM, GTX 660, pretty standard 2012ish gaming PC. You could run basically anything up through 2017-2018 on that. So yeah. I would NOT wanna touch browser games...on THAT. Even if I went for a i3 2100 with 4 GB RAM and a GTX 650, we're still talking most games up through 2013-2014 or so, with 8 GB RAM extending that to 2015. Basically, you get UHD 770 level performance.
So yeah. I know this is a long rant, but thinking about it, there's no situation I'd ever wanna run browser games as my primary choice. My steam library is too large, and goes back too long where I got decades of AAA games to rely on. Idk, I'm just not seeing the market. Who actually uses sites like that? Casuals? Maybe im being elitist or out of touch here, I just dont see the point.
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