Tag: google mobile gaming

Google has high hopes for mobile games

Google has been making some major announcements recently concerning its various online ventures. Last week, the company announced its intentions in the social gaming space. Google has been seeing a great deal of promise in the game industry and has adopted a focus on mobile games, which have become one of the most lucrative sectors in gaming today. Google has plans to make mobile games more social, but not to tether these games to any particular website or online space.

Google+ Games will close at the end of June

In order to keep mobile games mobile, Google has announced that it will be shutting down its Google+ Games service at the end of June this year. Google+ Games served as a platform for social games in the same way that Facebook has done for years. The platform supports games like Angry Birds, CityVille, and Triple Town, as well as various others. The platform does not align with the company’s vision of mobile games, however, and Google will be focusing its efforts on other ventures.

Developers may return unused funds in games to consumers

Those interested in continuing to play the games that were available through Google+ Games will have to contact that game’s developer. According to Google, the funds that consumers spend on these games will also be an issue that must be handled with developers. Some games will be migrating to other platforms, where unused funds will be honored by the development team. Those that will not be migrating may be inclined to returned unused funds, but there is no guarantee that this will be the case with all developers.

Google Play may draw more people to Google+

With Google+ Games coming to a close, Google is likely to put most of its attention on its Google Play service. This service is being designed specifically for mobile games and is meant to introduce social elements into this space. Google expects that this new service will help boost the adoption of its own social network, which continues to struggle to find a foothold against social networking titans like Facebook and Twitter.

Niantic Labs, the startup behind Ingress, is now launching a new line of digital books.

Google startup, Niantic Labs, has announced that it will be launching a new line of ebooks which are based on its wildly popular Ingress augmented reality mobile gaming experience.

The video game has become massively popular, even though it has not even seen its full release yet.

Ingress is an Android based augmented reality multiplayer game that first launched in its beta form last November. It remains possible to play it by invitation only, and yet it has managed to take off with explosive popularity. Now, its creators will be taking the experience another step forward with the release of this new line of digital products.

The augmented reality experience within this game will soon be broadened with the new product line.

On Friday, the company announced that the line of ebooks linked to the mobile gaming experience would be launched. The augmented reality book line has been dubbed “The Alignment”. So far, they have all been written by Thomas Greanias. This author is also the writer behind the Trilogies that were on the New York Times bestsellers list, Dominium Dei, and Raising Atlantis.

The first of these ebooks, The Alignment: Ingress, will be released through Google Play on April 2 but will then move on to other digital bookstores over time, following that initial sale date. These books will be linked to the Ingress mobile gaming experience and will feature various different types of perks and digital experiences, such as embedded codes and augmented reality.

The books in this new augmented reality ebook line will be co-published by Niantic, as well as the author’s own @lantis Books. Should the digital versions prove to be highly successful, there may be print versions of the same books to follow.

Niantic Labs is not only the creator of the augmented reality mobile gaming experience, Ingress, but it is also behind several other projects. These include the new Field Trip app that has been released by Google.

Given the popularity of the augmented reality game even before its official full release, it is not entirely surprising that these related digital products are being released to complement it. What would be surprising is if this were the last of the developments of this nature.