Chrome update to support plug-and-play controllers

Hastening the day when all games will be delivered to you from the cloud and every Internet outage fills you with rage, Google is adding native control pad support to its browser, Chrome.

Google's Paul Kinlan broke the news at Develop Liverpool, as reported by Edge, and said the necessary update should arrive in the first quarter of 2012.

The new bells and whistles mean controllers, microphones and cameras should work directly from browser applications, without the need for plug ins and permissions.

Edge notes that with WebGL for better graphics, HTML5 as a Flash alternative, and an open source video streaming surface called WebRTC, Chrome will be nearly as capable of supporting streaming games services as dedicated clients like OnLive's, although the company hasn't announced any such plan.