At a recent Silicon Valley International Game Developers Association (SV IGDA) meeting, Ni-Lewis waxed lyrical on the subject of why Google now cares so much about games, reminding the crowd that the company didn’t use to (remember Lively, anyone? No? Exactly).
But since Google began making platforms for consumers – like Android, Chrome, and Google TV – the firm appears to have realized that consumers like to play games, with Ni-Lewis noting that 60% of paid apps on Android are games.
Google, he added, cares about games because they showcase the firm’s technology, as well as serve to push platforms forward. Ni Lewis admitted they also showed Google where the firm needed improvement. In other words, yes, Google would like a slice of the pie, thank you very much.
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Ni-Lewis said developers should care about Google because of access to new distributions channels, new platform technologies, and proven cloud services.
Regarding distribution channels, Ni-Lewis said the Android Market has 300,000+ Android devices activated per day, Chrome has 120,000,000+ active users (seven-day active), and Google TV – launched in late 2010 – though not originally designed to be a game platform, has the potential to join the sphere. He said the people who buy Google TV are those in the casual gamer demographic.
Ni-Lewis touted the new platform technologies Google offers to mobile game developers, putting special emphasis on WebGL, which puts 3D in the browser. He claimed that even if developers don’t plan on using 3D in their game, WEBGL makes everything hardware-accelerated, allowing the developer to talk directly to the GPU through javascript – purportedly the fastest way to make graphics render.
Ni-Lewis also pumped up Google’s cloud services, saying they were what the firm was known for. He said developers could push users to post gameplay videos on YouTube, then, in addition to the free publicity, make money from YouTube ad revenue.
Then of course there’s Google Analytics, and Google’s App Engine which allows developers access to large amount of data, not to mention BigQuery which gives them the tools to mine it all. So, yes, hooray for cloud services.
Looking to the future, Ni-Lewis said there would be in-App payments for CWS and the Android Market, as well as much larger downloads available for Android handsets.
Google’s firm entrance into the space and entreaties to developers is just one more example that mobile gaming is a serious market, and it’s here to stay.