Google Play Adds Developer Options

Google Play

At GDC this morning, Google announced that new game developer tools are coming, as well as the ability to send gifts to friends in your Circles.

From the press release:

With the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week, we’ll be launching a number of new features for Google Play Games and other Google products. As they launch over the coming weeks, these new services and tools will help you unlock the power of Google to take your games to the next level.
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The Play Games app now supports multiplayer invites directly, further helping players discover your game and keep them playing. And the Google Play Store will also feature 18 new game categories, making it easier for players to find games they’ll love.
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Further enhancing Google Play Game services, we’re expanding multiplayer to support iOS, bringing turn-based and real-time multiplayer capabilities to both Android and iOS. To further help with cross platform game development, we’re updating our Play Games Unity Plug-in to support cross-platform multiplayer services, and introducing an early Play Games C++ SDK to support achievements and leaderboards. In addition, we’re launching enhanced Play Games statistics on the Google Play Developer Console, providing easy 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.
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We’re making Google Analytics available directly in the AdMob interface, so you can gain deeper insights into how users are interacting with your app. Turning those insights into effective action is vital, so we’re excited by the opportunities that in-app purchase ads will offer — enabling you to target users with specific promotions to buy items in your game. Advertising continues to be a core vehicle driving many game developers’ success, so we’re also bringing you new ways to optimize your ads to earn the most revenue.

Learn More

You can find out more about Google Play from their web store. To sign up as a developer, visit the Google Play Developer Console page.