Just in time for the Game Developers Conference, Google has just made a whopper of a gaming announcement, and several other lesser announcements. In pursuit of a more robust gaming ecosystem, Google is beefing up Google Play Games. Google Play Games is “Google’s cross-platform game service and SDK for Android, iOS and the web.”¹

The major announcement has to do with the iOS section of that quotation. In what is, perhaps, the most significant gaming announcement from Google in sometime, Google Play Games services will now support Android-iOS cross platform gaming:

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.²

Further, the Google gaming analytics platform is undergoing a significant update:

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.[/note]Ibid[/note]

Further, The Verge recently reported, Microsoft is planning to, “push Xbox Live cross-platform in a big way soon.”³ This, combined with the Google announcement could signal a major shift in the mobile gaming ecosystem.

Google also made some lesser, at least compared to the cross-platform support, announcements. The Google Play Store will further divide games from the current 8 categories, into 18 categories (left).⁴ Further, in an effort to boost discovery and interaction, Google will also be introducing two additional features:

We’ll be 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 your game and keep them playing.⁵

These are all very clear signals that Google is going to be taking games much more seriously than it has over the past few years. It will be interesting to follow this roll out, and to see just how many games add cross-platform functionality.