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Angry Birds is finally coming to our Web browsers, after bringing avian rage to the iPhone, Android phones and real life. You’ll have to play in the Google Chrome browser though — it’s only available from the Chrome Web Store, starting today.
But that doesn’t mean you have to be connected to the Internet to play. Because the game is a Chrome app, it can be saved offline, so you can hurl birds to your heart’s content when you’re off the grid.
The game’s Finnish fowl-wranglers Rovio promised the game will run smoothly at around 60 frames per second on most newish computers. That’s because of Chrome’s ability to take advantage of your computer’s graphics muscle through hardware acceleration.
The Chrome version of Angry Birds will also include new levels, which feature browser icons for you to batter with furious fowl.
You’ll even be able to invest in the cheating Mighty Eagle, if you think you can live with yourself. That’s thanks to in-app payments, which were also announced at today’s Google I/O conference in San Francisco.
The ability to shell out while using a Web app will please developers. They’ll also be happy to hear Google will only snag 5 per cent of their profits, compared to the 30 per cent Apple keeps in its App Store.
Google also showed off the first of its ‘Chromebooks’ — netbooks that run Chrome OS. Rather than allowing you to install programs and files on the hard drive, like on Windows or Linux netbooks, Chrome OS does everything through the browser. That means all your work is in the cloud, in Web apps such as Google Docs.
The first Chromebooks to come to shops will be a Samsung, with a 12.1-inch screen and 8-hour battery life, and a more portable Acer, with an 11.6-inch display and a battery good for 6.5 hours.
Both netbooks will arrive in UK shops on 15 June, the same date as they land in the US. Look for them on the Amazon and PC World websites.
For now, we only know US prices — the Wi-Fi-only version of the Samsung model will cost $429 (£260) and the Wi-Fi and 3G model will cost $499 (£300).
It’s a cost the 5,000 people attending Google I/O won’t have to worry about — they all received a surprise gift of a free Samsung Chromebook at today’s announcement, to go along with the white, limited-edition Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets they scored yesterday.
