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If you weren’t paying attention during Google’s San Francisco event this morning, listen up — the company announced a new companion app to go along with Google Play Games.
If you don’t remember, I wrote an editorial questioning why the service didn’t launch with the app. With features such as achievements, matchmaking and more, you’d think Google would have wanted their players to be able to access these social features within a centralized hub.
Thankfully, Google was planning on that all along. The app is already available in the Google Play Store and available to download for anyone on Android 2.3.6 and higher.
There aren’t really many surprises here, with the ability to check out leaderboards for all your games, keep up with those in your “circles,” track your achievements, and discover new games to play that have implemented Google Play Games services. It’s free, it’s beautiful, and it’s fun — download it in the Google Play Store right now.
Must be a ton of people hitting the download…
I’m about to download it.
Plus 1 download.
I’m one of them :)
Now I’m just waiting on a web based version, since achievements, leaderboards and cloud saves work on the web and iOS (and arguably everything else via the web API).
Also this interface feels very uninspired.
so beautiful..
apps seem to require having G+
I’m glad that it doesn’t just include games with achievements and stuff. I don’t know why I expected it, but it’s was a pleasant surprise. Also, its much nicer to just have an app that shortcuts to all my games instead of a folder.
I’m on 2.3.4 and it works. Sure its 2.3.6+?
I tried searching “Google Play Games” and other combinations earlier today on my phone and it wasn’t found. 12 hours later and the same searches return nothing. Works in the browser, though. Weird.
I like it. Honestly, I’ve never truly gotten into the gaming thing on Android, I’ve always kinda wanted to though. Other than Angry Birds and Temple Run I have uninstalled nearly every game I tried, but I downloaded this, and I like the concept of having a Game app that tracks all your game progression and such, I have a long weekend so I’ll be trying out quite a few new games.