Google Play game services takes on Apple's Game Center

As Google looks to truly take on Apple in the mobile games space, the company today launched the Google Play game services, an Android equivalent to Apple's own Game Center for iOS devices. Through these new services, Google hopes to make games on Android more social and involving, with the introduction of achievements and dedicated online leaderboards. These new game services also provide cloud saving functionality for developers to implementing into their games, as well as real-time multiplayer support. Notably, this new initiative also acts as a fresh push for the company's Google+ social networking services -- both the online leaderboards and the real-time multiplayer support are funneled through the Google+ Circles system. A variety of mobile games are already utilizing these new features, including World of Goo, Super Stickman Golf 2, Beach Buggy Blitz, Kingdom Rush, Eternity Warriors 2, and Osmos. The Google Play game services aren't just available through the Android SDK. There's also a native iOS SDK for iPhone and iPad games, as well as a whole host of REST APIs for other platforms, with libraries for JavaScript, Java, Python, Go, Dart, PHP, and more. Those developers interested in integrating the new Google Play game services into their mobile titles should visit the official website.