At its Google for Games Developer Summit, Google launched several tools, upgraded old ones and added new features and resources to help support developers and their endeavours, including game development and audience growth.
According to Google, Android usage on ChromeOS grew by 50 percent since 2021 and was mostly led by games. The company’s Google Play Games beta allows you to play Android games on a tablet or Chromebook, and is now releasing its beta for Windows PC.
Last year, Google released its Android Game Development Kit, allowing developers to produce better apps and games. Since then, Google has updated the kit on several occasions, based on developer feedback. The Android Game Development Extension allows native PC developers to build for Android directly from Microsoft’s Visual Studio, in addition to a new Memory Advice API that can let developers know how much memory their apps and games are consuming on a given device.
Further, to analyze and differentiate between CPU and GPU bottlenecks, the Android Game Development Kit now also includes an Android GPU Inspector that can help developers identify performance issues and achieve better frame rates and battery life.
To continue supporting developers, Google has launched a new Google Play Partner Program for Games. The new program “will provide larger game developers and studio the resources they need to maintain and scale their games (including faster releases, additional tools to help fight scaled abuse, and more),” said a Google spokesperson.
Additional tools to support developers include ‘Reach and Distribution,’ which allows developers to understand on which device the majority of their userbase sits, helping them make better decisions about what to build for.
A resource that has been available for developers is Google’s Android Vitals. It helps developers monitor and improve their game/app’s stability on Google Play. Today, Google added a new Developer Reporting API to the already-available resource to enable developers to fetch information about their crashing, ANR (app-not-responding) rates, clusters, and stack traces.
Lastly, a feature Android users globally have been waiting for. Google announced that the Android 12-introduced Play as you Download feature will soon be widely released for all Android 12 users. Play as you Download allows users to start playing a game while its assets are being downloaded in the background.
Learn more about everything introduced at today’s Google for Games Developer Summit here.
Image credit: Google
Source: Google
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