We reported earlier on this week on a leaked version of Google’s Play Game services, which this morning was officially confirmed at Google I/O. The service will offer real-time multiplayer, leaderboards, cloud saves and achievements. That’s not even the best part either, the service will be coming to Android, iOS and the web.
Available from some games today, the service isn’t a standalone app, but rather, Google is offering backend support for developers, much like OpenFeint – you can sign in using your Google+ login, and that login will track your identity across various games and devices.
Any developer who wants to launch a game on the Google Play store has access to game services, but Google won’t be making it mandatory. “We won’t make it a mandatory exercise, or have any certification process around it,” Google lead product manager Greg Hartrell told Engadget.
On top of the new functionality’s offered, game services also comes with some new APIs for monitoring piracy which many developers name as the number one reason not to publish their apps on Android.
Not only will Android smartphones be able to use the service, but it will run on anything running Google Play, including Google TV and the Nvidia Shield.
A few games are getting service updates today to include it, including Super Stickman Gold 2 and World of Goo, though many more will be updated in the coming months.
