You know how Microsoft has Xbox Live and Apple has Game Center? Well Google now has.. Google Play Games. The service has leaked out ahead of their yearly I/O conference in an updated Google Play Services. It will include multiplayer functionality, leaderboards, in-game chat, achievements and cloud game saving.
The leak came when Android Police got themselves a copy of Google Play Services 3.1.36 which is rolling out to devices right now. It’s a pretty big update, with the strings file more than doubling from 300 to 700 entries.
Right now the only thing that can be accessed is the settings, where it allows you to turn on game notifications, switch accounts, manage who can send notifications and show muted games. A lot of stuff doesn’t work right now, so we are definitely missing a lot of pieces.
There’s still a few unanswered questions for the service, like – will the games handle all the client-side UI or will we see a central game app come out of Google? All will be revealed on Thursday morning at I/O.
Below are some leaked screenshots from Android Police:
