Apple unveiled its plans Monday for a major update to iOS and a new cloud-based service, both of which will be available for consumers later this year, and iOS gamers will benefit from the changes that are coming. These changes won’t make iOS a perfect gaming platform, but it’s a solid indication that Apple’s moving in the right direction.
Game Center
Game Center is the social network component for gamers that Apple debuted with iOS 4. Game Center is being used by most game developers now to do little more than enable friends to connect and see each other’s achievements. It’s a shame, because iOS developers are already underutilizing what Game Center has to offer. Will that change with iOS 5?
Apple noted that Game Center now has 50 million registered users, and compared that to Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, which has 30 million. Apple also claims that iOS is the world’s most popular gaming platform.
It sounds great on paper, but anyone who’s use Xbox Live for more than a few minutes realizes that the subscriber base number doesn’t tell even part of the story - Xbox Live offers a much richer experience for gamers than Game Center does. And while iOS may be the most popular by force of sheer numbers alone, that doesn’t necessarily make it the best.
Perhaps that’s why Apple says it’s “socializing” Game Center with iOS 5. The company is adding new capabilities such as the ability to add a profile picture, see who their friends are following, and receive recommendations for new friends to follow and new games to play.
Game Center currently tracks individual achievements in games, but the revamp in iOS 5 will introduce a point system that’s not unlike the “Gamerscore” system used in Xbox Live - an aggregate score based on your overall achievements.
What’s more, Game Center will serve as a conduit to the App Store, enabling users to buy Game Center-equipped games from directly within the application.
Game Center in iOS 5 is also adding support for turn-based games. If you’re playing a strategy game with another player through Game Center, the software will manage the turns - sending your opponents push notifications to let them know it’s their turn to play, for example, and managing multiple game sessions. And Game Center also adds the ability to add players to existing multiplayer games, opening up new possibilities for cooperative and competitive game play.
All these are great enhancements, but unlike Xbox Live, Apple faces an uphill battle with Game Center, since it’s not the only social network for gamers in iOS, including OpenFeint, the cross-platform system recently sold to Gree for $104 million. Apple does have the upper hand, though, in that Game Center is Apple’s solution.
I mentioned at the outset that Game Center is underutilized. Developers have been slow to support some Game Center features, like voice chat. Apple needs to do a better job of evangelizing Game Center APIs outside of events like WWDC to make sure the hundreds of thousands of iOS developers out there are making the most of the technology.
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