Google Play Games Leaks Ahead of I/O

Android Police reports on an information leak out of Google in the lead-up to their I/O conference, which starts on May 15th. A new version of Google Play Services contains information about "Google Play Games," the company's long anticipated unified gaming service. The leak shows support for saved game syncing, matchmaking, notifications, game invites, achievements, leaderboards, and integration with other Google services. "Who can send you notifications is, of course, managed by Google+. Pressing that button will bring up the usual circle dialog. All Play Games identity work will be done by Google+. Try and look surprised. ... Play Games can somehow "auto pick" players, which means you can manually pick them too. Presumably this would go down in a match-making lobby of some kind. There are limited slots to a game, we just don't know how many. ... Leaderboards by time - choose this week, all time, or today. You can also show "player-centered" scores so you can find where you are on the boards. Leaderboards plug into G+ and can be non-public. You can also filter the leaderboard by people in your circles. It will also show you what percentile you're in.

Presumably

[Macfox]

A lot of assumptions based on a few strings. Don't worry, plenty of surprises left for IO.

Jeez are we still doing this?

[bazmail]

"Leak" is the new press release guys. Gives the story legs as people think they are learning something illicit. We all know that right?

Will this make mobile games less awful?

[Piata]

For years I've been hearing about how tablets and phones are going to eat the Nintendo's handhelds for lunch. I got my first smartphone 6 months ago (yes I'm a little late to the party) and I was suprised by how horrible mobile games are. I've tried a bunch (Simpson's Tapped Out, Super MAMC, Angry Birds Star Wars, Pudding Monster and TripleTown) and all of them either feel like Flash games from the 90's or Facebook games that want to nickle and dime you for everything.

It's great that Google has a "Google Play Games" service coming out but what's the point when the games themselves aren't worth playing?