Google reportedly making a Game Center for Android

If you play games on the iPhone, you are probably familiar with the Game Center, the social hub and that links players together so they can compete for high scores, show off trophies, invite people to multi-person games, and otherwise knits together the iOS game ecosystem. Windows Phone, while having a smaller gaming ecosystem, likewise has Xbox Live to provide a similar service. If you use Android…you might use Open Feint, but it’s a third party application that isn’t integrated into Android the same way as on competing platforms.

That’s going to change in the not-so-distant future, according to an anonymous source speaking to Business Insider. The source indicates that Google has become aware that the lack of an integrated gaming hub is hindering the gaming market on Android, so they are developing a native version to allow for better social gaming on the little green robot’s mobile OS.

An integrated social gaming hub would not only allow Google to make Android social gaming more appealing to users and developers, but Google could connect it to Google TV (version 3.0?) and online gaming via web apps offered through the Chrome Web Store and Google+’s games tab. Given Larry Page’s emphasis on making products interconnected (especially in regard to social networking) we imagine that an Android game hub would also leverage Google+ posting, to allow for frictionless online bragging about your gaming exploits.

If Google takes this route it will also allow them to match the social and mobile gaming experience that Facebook is gearing up to offer through its Facebook App Center – it’s not hard to imagine the Chrome Web Store getting merged into Google Play, leaving Google with a one-stop app and media clearing house that can go toe-to-toe with Facebook and Amazon.

When will we get our first look at this Android-ified version of a Game Center? Not surprisingly there’s no word from Google on this, but Google I/O in June isn't too far away.

source: Business Insider via Droid-Life

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