Last year Google and some of its Chromebook partners decided to try making "gaming Chromebooks" a thing. Most of them were had gaming laptop features like configurable RGB keyboards and high refresh rate screens used integrated GPUs.  This was because they were aimed at streaming services like Nvidia's GeForce Now and Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Google had some plans for gaming Chromebooks with the power to play more games locally (codenamed Hades) that would have included a dedicated GeForce RTX 4050 GPU. This would be a spec that was similar to some Windows gaming notebooks. This board would have served as a foundation that multiple PC makers could have used to build Chromebooks.

But this week developers have noticed the Hades board (plus a couple of other Nvidia-equipped boards, Agah and Herobrine) have been cancelled, which means that any laptops based on that board won't be happening.

The idea brought challenges at a time when the market is down the loo. Restrictions on Linux apps running in ChromeOS meant that support was still spotty. Anti-cheat software that many multiplayer games require still wasn't working, and external monitors weren't supported. Games running on 1440p and 4K displays were taking additional performance hits. Even if they were running at lower resolutions.

It seems that Google and its chums felt this was not the time to unleash the hoards of Hades.