Google launches Play Games app to take on Apple's Game Center

Google has made a bunch of important announcements yesterday, including the launch of a refreshed Nexus 7 tablet and Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. Another important announcement is a new social gaming app, Google Play Games. Google had announced the Google Play games service during the I/O back in May and the dedicated app is another step towards making gaming a chief focus for Android.

The Google Play Games app will act as a hub similar to Apple’s Game Center and users will be able to match achievements against their friends, save progress and scores when switching devices.

Check out your stats and pit them against a friend’s

Using the application, you will be able to discover new games your friends are playing, track your achievements as well as those of your opponents and play with your friends across the world. The app will show you an organised view of all the games you have installed and will list you achievements. You can compare achievements via public leaderboards and your Google+ profile.

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The Games service announced back at the I/O included a bunch of new APIs that facilitated Cloud Saves, Achievements, Leaderboards and Multiplayer Matchmaking.  The Cloud Saves API was introduced to help you save your game files onto the cloud which is especially helpful if you are reinstalling a game and want to resume playing from where you left off last time. The service has the capability to set up synchronous multiplayer games using Google’s own servers, as was demonstrated during Google I/O.

You can get the Google Play Games app for your phones sporting Android version 2.2 and higher from the Google Play Store and start playing against your friends right away.