New Google Play Services Are Rolling Out for Game App Developers

Monday, March 17, 2014

With GDC at full steam already this week, Google has kicked off the week announcing new services for its Google Play developer program including the new game gifts incentive program and enhanced engagement and discovery options.

Highlights of the New Offerings

- Google is introducing game gifts, a new service that lets players send virtual in-game objects to anyone in their circles or through player search.

- The Play Games app now supports multiplayer invites directly, further helping players discover games and encouraging play.

- The Google Play Store will see 18 new game categories, making it easier for game discovery.

- Google is expanding its Google Play Services to offer multiplayer to support iOS, bringing turn-based and real-time multiplayer capabilities to both Android and iOS.

- The Play Games Unity Plug-in to support cross-platform multiplayer services, and introducing an early Play Games C++ SDK to support achievements and leaderboards.

- New enhanced Play Games statistics on the Google Play Developer Console, provide easier game analytics for Play Games adopters. Developers will gain a daily dashboard that visualizes player and engagement statistics for signed in users, including daily active users, retention analysis and achievement, and leaderboard performance.

- Google Analytics will now be available directly in the AdMob interface, so developers can gain deeper insights into how users are interacting with in an app.

- New in-app purchase ads will be available as well as new ways to optimize ads to earn the most revenue.

More specific information should be forthcoming soon on the Android developers blog.

All the Google Play Team GDC talks will be livestreamed on YouTube, starting at 10:00AM PDT (5:00PM UTC).