One of the most popular video games of all time may be close to launching natively on Chromebooks. With little hype ahead of time, the official Minecraft support website (via Chrome Unboxed) has posted an FAQ page on the Minecraft Trial for Chromebooks.
The page states:
Minecraft Trial is a free trial version of Minecraft that provides a time-limited, survival-only experience for players. The Minecraft Trial for Chromebook is a version of the trial app that aims to capture platform-specific data for bug fixes and technical troubleshooting.
However, this version is not available worldwide. It"s soft launching in a number of countries:
- India
- Australia
- Brazil
- UAE
- Germany
- Denmark
- Spain
- France
- Indonesia
- Korea
- Kuwait
- Mexico
- Malaysia
- Qatar
- Saudi Arabia
- Thailand
- Turkey
If you are in one of those countries, all you have to do is go to the Google Play Store on your Chromebook and then find and install the Minecraft trial version. You can play the game for 90 minutes in Survival mode before the game forces you to stop. You can play the game again but you will have to create a new trial world for each 90 minute time period. You do not have to have a Microsoft account to play the trial version.
The limited trial version launch of Minecraft on Chromebooks is likely just a prelude to Microsoft and developer Mojang Studios launching the full version of the game for the ChromeOS devices sometime in the future. Hopefully we will learn more about those efforts soon.
Source: Minecraft support via Chrome Unboxed