برچسب: Play

Get ready for the next generation of gameplay powered by Play Games Services

Posted by Chris Wilk – Group Product Manager, Games on Google Play

To captivate players and grow your game, you need tools that enhance discovery and retention. Play Games Services (PGS) is your key to unlocking a suite of services that connect you with over 2 billion monthly active players. PGS empowers you to drive engagement through features like achievements and increase retention with promotions tailored to each gameplay progress. These tools are designed to help you deliver relevant and compelling content that keeps players coming back.

We are continuously evolving gaming on Play, and this year, we’re introducing more PGS-powered experiences to give you deeper player insights and greater visibility in the Play Store. To access these latest advancements and ensure continued functionality, you must migrate from PGS v1 to PGS v2 by May 2026. Let’s take a closer look at what’s new:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-6b_wWF96U

Drive discovery and engagement by rewarding gameplay progress

We’re fundamentally transforming how achievements work in the Play Store, making them a key driver for a great gaming experience. Now deeply embedded across the store, achievements are easily discoverable via search filters and game detail pages, and further drive engagement when offered with Play Points.

At a minimum, you should have at least 15 achievements spread across the lifetime of the game, in the format of incremental achievements to show progress. Games that enable players to earn at least 5 achievements in the first 2 hours of gameplay are most successful in driving deeper engagement^*.

The most engaging titles offer 40 or more achievements with diverse types of goals including leveling up characters, game progression, hidden surprises, or even failed attempts. To help you get the most out of achievements, we’ve made it easier to create achievements with bulk configuration in Play Console.

For eligible titles^*, Play activates quests to reward players for completing achievements – for example with Play Points. Supercell activated quests for Hay Day, leading to an average 177% uplift in installs^*. You can tailor your quests to achieve specific campaign objectives, whether it’s attracting high-value players or driving spend through repeated engagement, all while making it easy to jump back into your game.

Achievement-based quests allowing users to grow their farm and earn Play Points in the mobile game Hay Day on Google Play

Hay Day boosted new installs with achievement-based quests

Increase retention with tailored promotions

Promotional content is a vital tool for you to highlight new events, major content updates, and exciting offers within your game. It turns Play into a direct marketing channel to re-engage with your players. We’ve enhanced audience targeting capabilities so you can tailor your content to reach and convert the most relevant players.

By integrating PGS, you can use the Play Grouping API to create custom segments based on gameplay context^*. Using this feature, Kabam launched promotional content to custom audiences for Marvel Contest of Champions, resulting in a 4x increase in lapsed user engagement^*.

Marvel Contest of Champions increased retention with targeted promotional content

Start implementing PGS features today

PGS is designed to make the sign-in experience more seamless for players, automatically syncing their progress and identity across Android devices. With a single tap, they can pick up where they left off or start a new game from any screen. Whether you use your own sign-in solution, services from third parties, or a combination of both, we’ve made it easier to integrate Play Games Services with the Recall API.

To ensure a consistent sign-in experience for all players, we’re phasing out PGS v1.

All games currently using PGS v1 must migrate to PGS v2 by May 2026. After this date, you will no longer be able to publish or update games that use the v1 SDK.

Below you’ll find the timeline to plan your migration:

Migration guide

May 2025	As announced at I/O, new apps using PGS v1 can no longer be published. While existing apps can release updates with v1 and the APIs are still functional, you’ll need to migrate by May 2026, and APIs will be fully shut down in 2028.
May 2026	APIs are still functional for users, but are no longer included in the SDK. New app versions compiled with the most recent SDK would fail in the build process if your code still uses the removed APIs. If your app still relies on any of these APIs, you should migrate to PGS v2 as soon as possible.
Q3 2028	APIs are no longer functional and will fail when a request is sent by an app.

Looking ahead, more opportunities powered by PGS

Coming soon, players will be able to generate unique, AI-powered avatars within their profiles – creating fun, diverse representations of their gaming selves. With PGS integration, developers can allow players to carry over their avatar within the game. This enables players to showcase their gaming identity across the entire gameplay experience, creating an even stronger motivation to re-engage with your game.

Gen AI avatar profiles create more player-centric experiences

PGS is the foundational tool for maximizing your business growth on Play, enabling you to tailor your content for each player and access the latest gameplay innovations on the platform. Stay tuned for more PGS features coming this year to provide an even richer player experience.

^* To be eligible, the title must participate in Play Points, integrate Play Games Services v2, and have achievements configured in Play Console.

^* Data source from partner. Average incremental installs over a 14-day period.

^* Data source from partner.

^* The Play Grouping API provides strong measures to protect privacy for end users, including user-visible notification when the API is first used, and opt-out options through My Activity.

Source link

01/07/2025

Top announcements to know from Google Play at I/O ‘25

Posted by Raghavendra Hareesh Pottamsetty – Google Play Developer and Monetization Lead

At Google Play, we’re dedicated to helping people discover experiences they’ll love, while empowering developers like you to bring your ideas to life and build successful businesses. This year, Google I/O was packed with exciting announcements designed to do just that. For a comprehensive overview of everything we shared, be sure to check out our blog post recapping What’s new in Google Play.

Today, we’ll dive specifically into the latest updates designed to help you streamline your subscriptions offerings and maximize your revenue on Play. Get a quick overview of these updates in our video below, or read on for more details.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cny82VuONU4

#1: Subscriptions with add-ons: Streamlining subscriptions for you and your users

We’re excited to announce multi-product checkout for subscriptions, a new feature designed to streamline your purchase flow and offer a more unified experience for both you and your users. This enhancement allows you to sell subscription add-ons right alongside your base subscriptions, all while maintaining a single, aligned payment schedule.

The result? A simplified user experience with just one price and one transaction, giving you more control over how your subscribers upgrade, downgrade, or manage their add-ons. Learn more about how to create add-ons.

You can now sell base subscriptions and add-ons together in a single, streamlined transaction

#2: Showcasing benefits in more places across Play: Increasing visibility and value

We’re also making it easier for you to retain more of your subscribers by showcasing subscription benefits in more key areas across Play. This includes the Subscriptions Center, within reminder emails, and even during the purchase and cancellation processes. This increased visibility has already proved effective, reducing voluntary churn by 2%. To take advantage of this powerful new capability, be sure to enter your subscription benefits details in Play Console.

To help reduce voluntary churn, we’re showcasing your subscriptions benefits across Play

#3: New grace period and account hold duration: Decreasing involuntary churn

Another way we’re helping you maximize your revenue is by extending grace periods and account hold durations to tackle unintended subscription losses, which often occur when payment methods unexpectedly decline.

Now, you can customize both the grace period (when users retain access while renewal is attempted) and the account hold period (when access is suspended). You can set a grace period of up to 30 days and an account hold period of up to 60 days. However, the total combined recovery period (grace period + account hold) cannot exceed 60 days.

This means instead of an immediate cancellation, your users have a longer window to update their payment information. Developers who’ve already extended their decline recovery period—from 30 to 60 days—have seen impressive results, with an average 10% reduction in involuntary churn for renewals. Ready to see these results for yourself? Adjust your grace period and account hold durations in Play Console today.

Developers who extend their decline recovery period see an average 10% reduction in involuntary churn

But that’s not all. We’re constantly investing in ways to help you optimize conversion throughout the entire buyer lifecycle. This includes boosting purchase-readiness by prompting users to set up payment methods and verification right from device setup, and we’ve integrated these prompts into highly visible areas like the Play and Google account menus. Beyond that, we’re continuously enabling payments in more markets and expanding payment options. Our AI models are even working to optimize in-app transactions by suggesting the right payment method at the right time, and we’re bringing buyers back with effective cart abandonment reminders.

That’s it for our top announcements from Google I/O 2025, but there’s so many more updates to discover from this year’s event. Check out What’s new in Google Play to learn more, and to dive deeper into the session details, view the Google Play I/O playlist for all the announcements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T41OD37tI54

Source link

30/06/2025
How Mecha BREAK is driving PC-only growth on Google Play Games
Posted by Kosuke Suzuki – Director, Games on Google Play

On July 1, Amazing Seasun Games is set to unveil its highly anticipated action shooting game – Mecha BREAK, with a multiplatform launch across PC and Console. A key to their PC growth strategy is Google Play Games on PC, enabling the team to build excitement with a pre-registration campaign, maximize revenue with PC earnback, and ensure a secure, top-tier experience on PC.

Building momentum with pre-registration

With a legacy of creating high-quality games since 1995, Amazing Seasun Games has already seen Mecha BREAK attract over 3.5 million players during the last beta test. To build on this momentum, the studio is bringing their game to Google Play Games on PC to open pre-registration and connect with its massive player audience.

“We were excited to launch on Google Play Games on PC. We want to make sure all players can enjoy the Mecha BREAK experience worldwide.”

– Kris Kwok, Executive Producer of Mecha BREAK and CEO of Amazing Seasun Games

Mecha BREAK pre-registration on Google Play Games on PC homepage

Accelerating growth with the Native PC program

Mecha BREAK‘s launch strategy includes leveraging the native PC earnback, a program that gives native PC developers the opportunity to unlock up to 15% in additional earnback.

Beyond earnback, the program offers comprehensive support for PC game development, distribution, and growth. Developers can manage PC builds in Play Console, simplifying the process of packaging PC versions, configuring releases, and managing store listings. Now, you can also view PC-specific sales reports, providing a more precise analysis of your game’s financial performance.

Delivering a secure and high quality PC experience

Mecha BREAK is designed to deliver an intense and high-fidelity experience on PC. Built on a cutting-edge, proprietary 3D engine, the game offers players three unique modes of fast-paced combat on land and in the air.
Mecha BREAK offers a high-fidelity experience on PC

The decision to integrate with Google Play Games on PC was driven by the platform’s robust security infrastructure, including tools such as Play Integrity API, supporting large-scale global games like Mecha BREAK.

“Mecha BREAK’s multiplayer setting made Google Play Games a strong choice, as we expect exceptional operational stability and performance. The platform also offers advanced malware protection and anti-cheat capabilities.”

– Kris Kwok, Executive Producer of Mecha BREAK and CEO of Amazing Seasun Games

Bring your game to Google Play Games on PC

This year, the native PC program is open to all PC games, including PC-only titles. If you’re ready to expand your game’s reach and accelerate its growth, learn more about the eligibility requirements and how to join the program today.
Source link
25/06/2025
Grab Your Friends to Play the Party Platformer Ultimate Chicken Horse

In the party platformer, you and three other animal buddies build a level as you play, trying to place deadly traps before reaching the end of the level. If you can make it while leaving your friends in the dust, you’ll earn points. But you need to make sure you don’t mess with yourself in the process.

You can play locally or in online, cross-platform battle.

While trying to win, you’ll need to juggle the unique game flow including strategic block placement to twitch control platforming.

There are 18 different levels to explore, each with different features. You can also build and share custom levels using the huge library of blocks. To help you keep coming back, there is also customizable rule set and other game modes.

With the shared controller mode, you can play multiplayer with a single controller of keyboard.

Ultimate Chicken Horse is a free download now on the App Store. It’s for the iPhone and all iPad models. In the free version, you can play the beginning for free. To enjoy the entire game, ad-free, you’ll need to make a $9.99 in-app purchase.

Source link

21/06/2025
Smoother app reviews with Play Policy Insights beta in Android Studio
Posted by Naheed Vora – Senior Product Manager, Android App Safety

We understand you want clear Play policy guidance early in your development, so you can focus on building amazing experiences and prevent unexpected delays from disrupting launch plans. That’s why we’re making it easier to have smoother app publishing experiences, from the moment you start coding.

With Play Policy Insights beta in Android Studio, you’ll get richer, in-context guidance on policies that may impact your app through lint warnings. You’ll see policy summaries, dos and don’ts to avoid common pitfalls, and direct links to details.

We hope you caught an early demo at I/O. And now, you can check out Play Policy Insights beta in the Android Studio Narwhal Feature Drop Canary release.

Play Policy Insights beta in Android Studio shows rich, in-context guidance

How to use Play Policy Insights beta in Android Studio

Lint warnings will pop up as you code, like when you add a permission. For example, if you add an Android API that uses Photos and requires READ_MEDIA_IMAGES permission, then the Photos & Video Insights lint warning will appear under the respective API call line item in Android Studio.

You can also get these insights by going to Code > Inspect for Play Policy Insights and selecting the project scope to analyze. The scope can be set to the whole project, the current module or file, or a custom scope.

Get Play Policy Insights beta for the whole project, the current module or file, or a custom scope and see the results along with details for each insights in the Problems tool window.

In addition to seeing these insights in Android Studio, you can also generate them as part of your Continuous Integration process by adding the following dependency to your project.

Kotlin
lintChecks("com.google.play.policy.insights:insights-lint:<version>")
Groovy
lintChecks 'com.google.play.policy.insights:insights-lint:<version>'
Share your feedback on Play Policy Insights beta

We’re actively working on this feature and want your feedback to refine it before releasing it in the Stable channel of Android Studio later this year. Try it out, report issues, and stop by the Google Play Developer Help Community to share your questions and thoughts directly with our team.

Join us on June 16 when we answer your questions. We’d love to hear about:
Developers have told us they like:
For more, see our Google Play Help Center article or Android Studio preview release notes.

We hope features like this will help give you a better policy experience and more streamlined development.
Source link
11/06/2025
5 Best Games to Play Over the Long Weekend

Many iOS games are designed for quick action gameplay that is best suited for the few spare moments in your day. There is a small subset of games that can be played for hours on end. In fact, these games are ones that you set aside time to play to truly savor.

Death Road to Canada

Get ready to do whatever you can to survive a road like no other. The game begins by letting you team up, and then its off to your destination. Along the way, you will run into other bands of survivors, car troubles, and of course zombies. Your crew will need to scavenge for resources, battle back zombies, and face the consequences of a crisis in psyche due to the trying circumstances.

The game does a great job of balancing variety, challenge, and humor. You will die often, but the game still entices you to retry to make it to your destination. There are multiple ways to change how you play to survive as long as you can. The game is filled with different circumstances and situations to contend with along the death road.

Get Death Road to Canada in the App Store

Kalimba

Kalimba has players controlling two characters at the same time to help restore light to the island. Are you up to the task in this beautiful puzzle platformer?

Visually, Kalimba is gorgeous. The game features an aesthetically pleasing minimalist design that is full of geometric shapes that come to life. Everything is rendered in 2-D with bright and vibrant colors and amazing textures. The totems and narrator have distinctive appearances so it’s always easy to tell each character apart from one another. Environments dynamically change once the toggles get activated, and it’s all done in a seamless transition that’s rather mesmerizing with particle effects.

Animations in Kalimba are buttery smooth and fluid, with zero lag on my iPhone 7. There’s also voice acting through the narration, and it’s incredibly well done. A quirky soundtrack plays in the background, which fits in with the overall quirky theme of the game. Overall, Kalimba is beautifully designed inside and out in terms of visual and audio.

Get Kalimba™ in the App Store

Thimbleweed Park

Thimbleweed Park is a point-and-click adventure game that’s dark, mysterious, and packed full of humor.

The classic style of point and click adventure games of the past like Secret of Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, and others are on full display in Thimbleweed Park. You get to play as two FBI Agents who are faced with a small town murder to solve. There are numerous quirky characters to interact with as you play through a storyline that is about a dozen hours.

Get Thimbleweed Park in the App Store

Cat Quest

Cat Quest is a fantastic open world RPG dungeon crawler that’s filled with dragons, cats, and epic loot.

Since Cat Quest is an adventure game at heart, players discover and unravel the story of a cat hero who carries the mark of the “Dragonblood” on his head. Once the premise of the plot is revealed, you’ll embark on a journey of getting strong enough to defeat the dragons. All of your traveling is done on the overworld, as well as combat. Villages and NPCs reveal themselves to you as the story unfolds. Everything is told through quests, whether they’re main quests relating to the story, or side quests that you can do for experience, loot, and rewards.

The biggest draw of Cat Quest is the fact that everything is done in real-time, so there’s no waiting around. As you move around on the overworld, you’ll see enemies scurrying about around you. You can engage in combat with them on the overworld, or just avoid them altogether if they’re too tough.

Get Cat Quest in the App Store

Space Marshals 2

Space Marshals 2 is the sequel to the original Space Marshals. It’s an immersive tactical combat stealth game where you lay down the law.

The sequel continues the style of the original with a top down shooter adventure that gives you dual stick controls, and a story based adventure to play through. Both editions emphasize tactical combat to allow you to take out enemies from behind with stealth, as well as flank enemies and take cover. The new version seems to have more happening at once, and yet it’s easier to manage all that’s going on. Space Marshals 2 presents relatively expansive mission maps with numerous pockets of enemies. There are also blockades, transitions, and bosses to contend with across the 20 deluxe missions.

Space Marshals 2 is beautiful and packs in a ton of action. You’ll have a hard time putting this one down once you get going.

Get Space Marshals 2 in the App Store

Source link

23/05/2025
What’s new in Google Play
Posted by Paul Feng, VP of Product Management, Google Play

At Google Play, we’re dedicated to helping people discover experiences they’ll love, while empowering developers like you to bring your ideas to life and build successful businesses.

At this year’s Google I/O, we unveiled the latest ways we’re empowering your success with new tools that provide robust testing and actionable insights. We also showcased how we’re continuing to build a content-rich Play Store that fosters repeat engagement alongside new subscription capabilities that streamline checkout and reduce churn.

Check out all the exciting developments from I/O below and learn how they’ll help you grow your business on Google Play.

Helping you succeed every step of the way

Last month, we introduced our latest Play Console updates focused on improving quality and performance. A redesigned app dashboard centered around four developer objectives (Test and release, Monitor and improve, Grow users, Monetize) and new Android vitals metrics offer quick insights and actionable suggestions to proactively improve the user experience.

Get more actionable insights with new Play Console overview pages

Building on these updates, we’ve launched dedicated overview pages for two developer objectives: Test and release and Monitor and improve. These new pages bring together more objective-related metrics, relevant features, and a “Take action” section with contextual, dynamic advice. Overview pages for Grow and Monetize will be coming soon.

Halt fully-rolled out releases when needed

Historically, a release at 100% live meant there was no turning back, leaving users stuck with a flawed version until a new update rolled out. Soon, you’ll be able to halt fully-live releases, through Play Console and the Publishing API to stop the distribution of problematic versions to new users.

You’ll soon be able to halt fully live releases directly from Play Console and the Publishing API, stopping the distribution of problematic versions to new users.

Optimize your store listings with better management tools and metrics

We launched two tools to enhance your store listings. The asset library makes it easy to upload, edit, and view your visual assets. Upload them from Google Drive, organize with tags, and crop for repurposing. And with new open metrics, you gain deeper insights into listing performance so you can better understand how they attract, engage, and re-engage users.

Stay ahead of threats with the Play Integrity API

We’re committed to robust security and preventing abuse so you can thrive on Play’s trusted platform. The Play Integrity API continuously evolves to combat emerging threats, with these recent enhancements:
Unlocking more discovery and engagement for your apps and its content

Last year, we shared our vision for a content-rich Google Play that has already delivered strong results. Year-over-year, Apps Home has seen over a 25% increase in average monthly visitors with apps seeing a 10% growth in acquisitions and double-digit growth in app spend for those monetizing on Google Play. Building on that vision, we’re introducing even more updates to elevate your discovery and engagement, both on and off the store.

For example, curated spaces, launched last year, celebrate seasonal interests like football (soccer) in Brazil and cricket in India, and evergreen interests like comics in Japan. By adding daily content—match highlights, promotions, and editorial articles directly on the Apps Home—these spaces foster discovery and engagement. Curated spaces are a hit with over 920,000 highly engaged users in Japan returning to the comics space monthly. Building on this momentum, we are expanding to more locations and categories this year.

Our curated spaces add daily content to foster repeat discovery and engagement.

We’re launching new topic browse pages that feature timely, relevant, and visually engaging content. Users can find them throughout the Store, including Apps Home, store listing pages, and search. These pages debut this month in the US with Media & Entertainment, showcasing over 100,000 shows, movies, and select sports. More localized topic pages will roll out globally later this year.

New topic browse pages for media and entertainment are rolling out this month in the US.

We’re expanding Where to Watch to more markets, including the UK, Korea, Indonesia, and Mexico, to help users find and deep-link directly into their subscribed apps for movies and TV. Since launching in the US in November 2024, we’ve seen promising results: People who view app content through Where to Watch return to Play more frequently and increase their content search activity by 30%.

We’re also enhancing how your content is displayed on the Play Store. Starting this July, all app developers can add a hero content carousel and a YouTube playlist carousel to their store listings. These formats will help showcase your best content and drive greater user engagement and discovery.

For apps best experienced through sound, we’re launching audio samples on the Apps Home. A simple tap offers users a brief escape into your audio content. In early testing, audio samples made users 3x more likely to install or open an app! This feature is now available for all Health & Wellness app developers with users in the US, with more categories and markets coming soon. You can express your interest in promoting audio content.

We’re enhancing how your content is displayed on the Play Store, offering new ways to showcase your app and drive user engagement.

Helping you take advantage of deeper engagement on Play, on and off the Store

Last year, we introduced Engage SDK, a unified solution to deliver personalized content and guide users to relevant in-app experiences. Integrating it unlocks surfaces like Collections, our immersive full-screen experience bringing content directly to the user’s home screen.

We’re rolling out updates to expand your content’s reach even further:
Integrate with Engage SDK today to take advantage of this new expansion and boost re-engagement. Try our codelab to test the ease of publishing content with Engage SDK and express interest in the developer preview.

Engage SDK now supports Collections for Travel. Users can find timely itineraries and recent searches, all in one convenient place.

Maximizing your revenue with subscriptions enhancements

With over a quarter-billion subscriptions, Google Play is one of the world’s largest subscriptions platforms. We’re committed to helping you turn engaged users into revenue growth by continually enhancing our tools to meet evolving customer needs.

To streamline your purchase flow, we’re introducing multi-product checkout for subscriptions. This lets you sell subscription add-ons alongside base subscriptions, all under a single, aligned payment schedule. Users get a simplified experience with one price and one transaction, while you gain more control over how subscribers upgrade, downgrade, or manage their add-ons.

You can now sell base subscriptions and add-ons together in a single, streamlined transaction.

To help you retain more of your subscribers, we’re now showcasing subscription benefits in more places across Play – including the Subscriptions Center, in reminder emails, and during purchase and cancellation flows. This increased visibility has already reduced voluntary churn by 2%. Be sure to enter your subscription benefits in Play Console so you can leverage this powerful new capability.

To help reduce voluntary churn, we’re showcasing your subscriptions benefits across Play.

Reducing involuntary churn is a key factor in optimizing your revenue. When payment methods unexpectedly decline, users might unintentionally cancel. Now, instead of immediate cancellation, you can now choose a grace period (up to 30 days) or an account hold (up to 60 days). Developers who increased the decline recovery period – from 30 to 60 days – saw an average 10% reduction in involuntary churn for renewals.

On top of this, we’re expanding our commitment to get more buyers ready for purchases throughout their entire journey. This includes prompting users to set up payment methods and verification right at device setup. After setup, we’ve integrated prompts into highly visible areas like the Play and Google account menus. And as always, we’re continuously enabling payments in more markets and expanding payment options. Plus, our AI models now help optimize in-app transactions by suggesting the right payment method at the right time, and we’re bringing buyers back with effective cart abandonment reminders.

Grow your business on Google Play

Our latest updates reinforce our commitment to fostering a thriving Google Play ecosystem. From enhanced discovery and robust tools to new monetization avenues, we’re empowering you to innovate and grow. We’re excited for the future we’re building together and encourage you to use these new capabilities to create even more impactful experiences. Thank you for being an essential part of the Google Play community.

Explore this announcement and all Google I/O 2025 updates on io.google starting May 22.
Source link
22/05/2025
Making Google Play the best place to grow PC games
Posted by Aurash Mahbod – VP and GM of Games on Google Play

We’re stepping up our multiplatform gaming offering with exciting news dropping at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC). We’re bringing users more games, more ways to play your games across devices, and improved gameplay. You can read all about the updates for users from The Keyword. At GDC, we’ll be diving into all of the latest games coming to Play, plus new developer tools that’ll help improve gameplay across the Android ecosystem.

Today, we’re sharing a closer look at what’s new from Play. We’re expanding our support for native PC games with a new earnback program and making Google Play Games on PC generally available this year with major upgrades. Check out the video or keep reading below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP-Bzzn8q4s

Google Play connects developers with over 2 billion monthly active players¹ worldwide. Our tools and features help you engage these players across a wide range of devices to drive engagement and revenue. But we know the gaming landscape is constantly evolving. More and more players enjoy the immersive experiences on PC and want the flexibility to play their favorite games on any screen.

That’s why we’re making even bigger investments in our PC gaming platform. Google Play Games on PC was launched to help mobile games reach more players on PC. Today, we’re expanding this support to native PC games, enabling more developers to connect with our massive player base on mobile.

Expanding support for native PC games

For games that are designed with a PC-first audience in mind, we’ve added even more helpful tools to our native PC program. Games like Wuthering Waves, Remember of Majesty, Genshin Impact, and Journey of Monarch have seen great success on the platform. Based on feedback from early access partners, we’re taking the program even further, with comprehensive support across game development, distribution, and growth on the platform.
We’re opening up the program for all native PC games – including PC-only games – this year. Learn more about the eligibility requirements and how to join the program.

Native PC games on Google Play Games

Making PC an easy choice for mobile developers

Bringing your game to PC unlocks a whole new audience of engaged players. To help maximize your discoverability, we’re making all mobile games available³ on PC by default with the option to opt out anytime.

Games will display a playability badge indicating their compatibility with PC. “Optimized” means that a game meets all of our quality standards for a great gaming experience while “playable” means that the game meets the minimum requirements to play well on a PC. With the support of our new custom control mappings, many games can be playable right out of the box. Learn more about the playability criteria and how to optimize your games for PC today.

Thousands of new games are added to Google Play Games

To enhance our PC experience, we’ve made major upgrades to the platform. Now, gamers can enjoy the full Google Play Games on PC catalog on even more devices, including AMD laptops and desktops. We’re partnering with PC OEMs to make Google Play Games accessible right from the start menu on new devices starting this year.

We’re also bringing new features for players to customize their gaming experiences. Custom controls is now available to help tailor their setup for optimal comfort and performance. Rolling out this month, we’re adding a handy game sidebar for quick adjustments and enabling multi-account and multi-instance support by popular demand.

You can customize controls while playing Dye Hard – Color War

Unlocking exclusive rewards on PC with Play Points

To help you boost engagement, we’re also rolling out a more seamless Play Points⁴ experience on PC. Play Points balance is now easier to track and more rewarding, with up to 10x points boosters⁵ on Google Play Games. This means more opportunities for players to earn and redeem points for in-game items and discounts, enhancing the overall PC experience.

Google Play Points is integrated seamlessly with Google Play Games

Bringing new PC UA tools powered by Google Ads

More developers are launching games on PC than ever, presenting an opportunity to reach a rapidly growing audience on PC. We want to make it easier for developers to reach great players with Google Ads. We’re working on a solution to help developers run user acquisition campaigns for both mobile emulated and native PC titles within Google Play Games on PC. We’re still in the early stages of partner testing, but we look forward to sharing more details later this year.

Join the celebration!

We’re celebrating all that’s to come to Google Play Games on PC with players and developers. Take a look at the behind-the-scenes from our social channels and editorial features on Google Play. At GDC, you can dive into the complete gaming experience that is available on the best Android gaming devices. If you’ll be there, please stop by and say hello – we’re at the Moscone Center West Hall!

¹ Source: Google internal data measuring monthly users who opened a game downloaded from the Play store.

² Additional terms apply for the earnback program.

³ Your game’s visibility on Google Play Games on PC is determined by its playability badge. If your game is labeled as “Untested”, this means it will only appear if a user specifically searches for it in the Google Play Games on PC search menu. The playability badge may change once testing is complete. You can express interest in having Play evaluate your game for playability using this form.

⁵ Offered for a limited time period. Additional terms apply.
Source link
29/04/2025
Improve app quality and performance with new Play Console insights
Posted by Dan Brown, Dina Gandal and Hadar Yanos – Product Managers, Google Play

At Google Play, we partner with developers like you to help your app or game business reach its full potential, providing powerful tools and insights every step of the way. In Google Play Console, you’ll find the features needed to test, publish, improve, and grow your apps — and today, we’re excited to share several enhancements to give you even more actionable insights, starting with a redesigned app dashboard tailored to your key workflows, and new metrics designed to help you improve your app quality.

Focus on the metrics that matter with the redesigned app dashboard

The first thing you’ll notice is the redesigned app dashboard, which puts the most essential insights front and center. We know that when you visit Play Console, you usually have a goal in mind — whether that’s checking on your release status or tracking installs. That’s why you’ll now see your most important metrics grouped into four core developer objectives:
Each objective highlights the three metrics most important to that goal, giving you a quick grasp of how your app is doing at a glance, as well as how those metrics have changed over time. For example, you can now easily compare between your latest production release against your app’s overall performance, helping you to quickly identify any issues. In the screenshot below, the latest production release has a crash rate of 0.24%, a large improvement over the 28-day average crash rate shown under “Monitor and Improve.”

The redesigned app dashboard in Play Console helps you see your most important metrics at a glance.

At the top of the page, you’ll see the status of your latest release changes prominently displayed so you know when it’s been reviewed and approved. If you’re using managed publishing, you can also see when things are ready to publish. And based on your feedback, engagement and monetization metrics now show a comparison to your previous year’s data so you can make quick comparisons.

The new app dashboard also keeps you updated on the latest news from Play, including recent blog posts, new features relevant to your app, and even special invitations to early access programs.

In addition to what’s automatically displayed on the dashboard, we know many of you track other vital metrics for your role or business. That’s why we’ve added the “Monitor KPI trends” section at the bottom of your app dashboard. Simply scroll down and personalize your view by selecting the trends you need to monitor. This customized experience allows each user in your developer account to focus on their most important insights.

Later this year, we’ll introduce new overview pages for each of the four core developer objectives. These pages will help you quickly understand your performance, showcase tools and features within each domain, and list recommended actions to optimize performance, engagement, and revenue across all your apps.

Get actionable notifications when and where you need them

If you spend a lot of time in Play Console, you may have already noticed the new notification center. Accessible from every page, the notification center helps you to stay up to date with your account and apps, and helps you to identify any issues that may need urgent attention.

To help you quickly understand and act on important information, we now group notifications about the same issue across multiple apps. Additionally, notifications that are no longer relevant will automatically expire, ensuring you only see what needs your attention. Plus, notifications will be displayed on the new app dashboard within the relevant objectives.

Improve app quality and performance with new Play Console metrics

One of Play’s top goals is to provide the insights you need to build high-quality apps that deliver exceptional user experiences. We’re continuing to expand these insights, helping you prevent issues like crashes or ANRs, optimize your app’s performance, and reduce resource consumption on users’ devices.

Users expect a polished experience across their devices, and we’ve learned from you it can be difficult to make your app layouts work seamlessly across phones and large screens. To help with this, we’ve introduced pre-review checks for incorrect edge-to-edge rendering, while another new check helps you detect and prevent large screen layout issues caused by letterboxing and restricted layouts, along with resources on how to fix them.

We’re also making it easier to find and triage the most important quality issues in your app. The release dashboard in Play Console now displays prioritized quality issues from your latest release, alongside the existing dashboard features for monitoring post-launch, like crashes and ANRs This addition provides a centralized view of user-impacting issues, along with clear instructions to help you resolve critical user issues to improve your users’ experiences.

The quality panel at the top of the release dashboard gives you a prioritized view of issues that affect users on your latest release and provides instructions on how to fix them.

A new “low memory kill” (LMK) metric is available in Android vitals and the Reporting API. Low memory issues cause your app to terminate without any logging, and can be notoriously difficult to detect. We are making these issues visible with device-specific insights into memory constraints to help you identify and fix these problems. This will improve app stability and user engagement, which is especially crucial for games where LMKs can disrupt real-time gameplay.

The low memory kill metric in Android vitals gives you device-specific insights into low memory terminations, helping you improve app stability and user engagement.

We’re also collaborating closely with leading OEMs like Samsung, leveraging their real-world insights to define consistent benchmarks for optimal technical quality across Android devices. Excessive wakelocks are a leading cause of battery drain, a top frustration for users. Today, we’re launching the first of these new metrics in beta: excessive wake locks in Android vitals. Take a look at our wakelock documentation and provide feedback on the metric definition. Your input is essential as we refine this metric towards general availability, and will inform our strategy for making this information available to users on the Play Store so they can make informed decisions when choosing apps.

Together, these updates provide you with even more visibility into your app’s performance and quality, enabling you to build more stable, efficient, and user-friendly apps across the Android ecosystem. We’ll continue to add more metrics and insights over time. To stay informed about all the latest Play Console enhancements and easily find updates relevant to your workflow, explore our new What’s new in Play Console page, where you can filter features by the four developer objectives.
Source link
25/04/2025