We’ve learned that apps and games can be more than just experiences. They’re businesses, led by people like you. It is our goal to support your businesses in reaching their full potential. We shared at our recent Google for Games Developer Summit how Google teams have been working to create the next generation services, tools, and features that will help you create and monetize top quality experiences.
We are here to assist you in every step of the game development process.
It’s easier to get your game on more screens.
We want to make it easy for players to play games on their new devices and screens.
- The popularity of gameplay on tablets, foldables and Chromebooks has increased and gives you the chance to be more immersive and engaging than ever. Chrome OS usage grew by 50% in 2021, largely due to games.
- Google Play Games For PC Beta was released in January to South Korea and Taiwan. Google’s standalone Windows PC app allows users to seamlessly play high-quality Google Play games on their smartphone, tablet, Chromebook or (now) Windows PC. Get more information and optimize your game to fit more screens.
- Download Beta program was announced last year. We will soon make it available to all Android 12 users. Pay-as-you-download allows you to jump into the game in seconds, while your assets are downloaded in background. This can be done with minimal changes to your underlying code. Register for the beta.
It’s easier to create high-quality games
We are committed to helping you create high-quality Android games. This is why we continue to work with SDKs and tools that make development easier and give insights about your game. We released the Android Game Development Kit (AGDK) last year. This set of libraries and tools makes Android Game Development easier. We have also made numerous updates based upon developer feedback.
- Android Game Development Extension enables game developers to create Android games directly from Visual Studio. AGDE now supports cross compatibility with Visual Studio and Android Studio, making it easier to debug Java and C projects.
- The new Memory Advice API (Beta), which was added to AGDK, helps developers understand their memory usage by combining the best signals from a device to determine how close it is to a low-memory kill.
- The Android GPU Inspection Frame Profiler has been fully launched. It will help you identify when your game is slowing down on the GPU vs. the CPU and give you better frame rates and longer battery life.
Get more tools to help with your success on Google Play
The Play Console is a valuable resource that can help you in the game development process. It provides insight and tools to aid before and after launch.
- To help developers of all sizes expand their businesses with Google Play, we continue to invest programs. We launched the Google Play Partnership for Games for our largest developers. This program offers additional growth tools and premium services that are tailored to the needs of this group.
- Reach and devices help you make informed decisions about which devices to build, launch, and test. This is both pre-launch as well as post-launch. It already displays your issue and install distributions for a variety of device attributes. We’re launching Google Play revenue distributions and revenue growth distributions today for your game and its peers. This allows you to build revenue-based business models for troubleshooting and device targeting, if this suits your business model more than installing installs.
- Strategic guidance was launched in Console. It provides an intuitive way for you to evaluate the monetization of your game and identify opportunities to increase revenue. Reach and devices can be thought of as tools that help you understand revenue opportunities from both a technical and business perspective. Strategic guidance can also help you see the full picture of your IAP revenue drivers.
- Android vitals will help you monitor and improve the stability of your game on Google Play. We’ve just launched filters and country breakdowns for Vitals metrics for those who have games that are globally present. This makes it easier to prioritize and resolve stability issues. Today we launch the Developer reporting API, which allows you programmatic access your core Android vitals metrics, issue data, as well as clusters, crash and ANR rates, and stack trace information.
For additional information and documentation, visit g.co/android/games. We are committed to the support of the developer ecosystem. We greatly appreciate your feedback and investment in creating quality games experiences for players all over the globe.