Amazon announced yesterday that they are making their GameCircle gaming service available for all Android devices. Game developers will need to incorporate the API into their games to make use of the service. GameCircle is an online gaming service that keeps track of achievements, levels, accomplishments and other data for game players so they can switch between devices and pick up right where they left off. The cloud offering also provides support for multiplayer games. Up until this announcement, the GameCircle platform was only available for games on Kindle devices.
By expanding the offering to other Android devices, Amazon should be in a better position to compete with Google's new game service that was announced during this year's Google I/O event. Amazon's GameCircle has been around for about a year already, so the system should be more mature with many issues already resolved.
Along with the ability to sync data between devices using Amazon's Whispersync technologies, the GameCircle platform will resolve conflicts between devices, queue updates to support offline operation, and offers a simple interface for implementation. According to Amazon, developers will not have to incorporate a specific splashscreen to use the service and they can customize notifications. Amazon also makes a point to note that game data remains the property of the developers.
The question remains to be seen whether game developers will include the code for both this and Google's cloud gaming service in their titles.
source: Amazon
