Google’s cloud gaming service for developers gets new features and analytics capabilities.
As the sport Developers Conference got underway in San Francisco on Monday, Google announced upcoming enhancements to its Google Play game services with the intention to offer greater support for both Android and iOS devices.
Launched last year as Google’s answer to Apple’s Game Center, Google Play offers game developers APIs to implement game-enhancing features like leaderboards, achievements, cloud-based data storage, and real-time multiplayer connectivity.
Google, however, positions Play as a complement to Apple’s offering. “We propose that both Game Center and Google Play games are equally visible within your application,” the corporate says in its developer documentation.
Several of the hot features coming to Google Play games within the weeks ahead aim to assist with player engagement. Google Play is gaining the power to send virtual in-game gifts to people of their circles or through multiplayer search. The Play games app now supports multiplayer invites. And the Google Play Store now supports 18 additional categories to augment game discoverability.
[Must get a handle for your kids’ digital shopping sprees? See Google Tightens In-App Purchase Process.]
Apple last year made it clear it didn’t wish people sharing virtual gifts. The makers of Line, a mobile messaging application popular in Asia, last May said that Apple had directed the corporate to take away the facility to transfer virtual stickers, bought via in-app purchase, to other users. Google’s decision to implement this selection is probably going to make Android development more appealing for apps where this actual mechanic is smart.
Google Play will soon support iOS for both turn-based and real-time multiplayer interaction, a feature that might otherwise require the implementation of a game server. The service’s plug-in for Unity, a favored cross-platform game development framework, is additionally being updated so as to add these multiplayer capabilities. And Google is introducing a Play Games C++ SDK to support achievements and leaderboards.
Google is expanding the Play games statistics, available through its Google Play Developer Console, to assist developers better know how Google Play games features are getting used . It is usually augmenting its AdMob mobile advertising interface by adding access to Google Analytics and introducing in-app purchase ads, which enable developers to focus on users with promotions that encourage them to shop in-app goods.
Whereas Game Center works only on iOS, Google Play works with Android, iOS, and Web-based games, making it potentially appealing to be able to make a game’s codebase more easily built for multiple platforms.
Mobile-game developers still are likely to concentrate on developing for iOS first, because it’s more lucrative, however the growing size of the Android ecosystem makes cross-platform code desirable when possible — Google says it paid out four times as much money to developers in 2013 because it did in 2012. Or even when developers decide on entirely distinct native code bases, having a standard backend can simplify the upkeep of those apps.
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Thomas Claburn have been writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications equivalent to New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and tv, having earned a not particularly useful … View Full Bio
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