[News] Google Play Game Services Launched at Google I/O 2013
Another interesting piece of software announced at Google I/O 2013 was its Google Play Game Services. This is Google’s attempt at offering mobile gamers the “ultimate cross-platform gaming experience” and is similar to Apple’s Game Center service for iOS, but has that extra mile that makes it a bit more… “special”. So what makes it so special you ask?…
Well, first off, Google Play Game Services come with four major features: Cloud Save, Achievements, Leaderboards, and Multiplayer. What also makes this special is that the first three options (Cloud Save, Achievements and Leaderboards) will be made available across three different platforms. Those three will also be made available not only for Android, but for iOS and the web as well! Now that makes it more “special”!
The reason probably why the last one of the major features (Multiplayer), won’t be made available to the other platforms is that the games played on different OSes won’t be compatible with each other, and it may just be reserved for Android, to make it exclusively special for Android!
If the games in the Play Store were of a “higher level”, then I think this game service would be a popular hit, but because the games are a bit limited, it may be a while before it “takes off”.
Greg Hartell, Google’s lead product manager did say that the multiplayer option may be made available to iOS sometime in the near future, but did not specify a date… so in the meantime, only Android users can benefit from the full suite of features (including multiplayer). Google Play Game Services will be available soon, but currently you can get the developer’s SDK version of it here.
