Android v iOS Gaming Google Play to Get CrossPlatform Support
Imagine playing a game on your Android phone or tablet with a friend who's playing the same game on an iOS device  cross-platform support, in other words. That's the promise behind what may be the most significant new feature in a medley of enhancements coming to the gaming side of Google Play, unveiled by Google at the Game Developer's Conference this morning the developer-focused video games show kicks off today in San Francisco and runs all this week . Google says the feature will bring "turn-based and real-time multiplayer capabilities to both Android and iOS," and that it's updating its Unity-related plugin to support cross-platform multiplayer. It's also rolling out a C++ SDK that'll fold in all-important achievements and leaderboards. Other features include a new analytics tool in the Google Play Developer Console a dashboard that helps track daily player engagement, active users, achievements and leaderboard activity, something called "game gifts" that'll let players wing in-game objects at their peers, and direct multiplayer invite support. There are new game categories as well, bringing the total to 18 and making the genre-hunt more granular Google's FAQ has the new category list. Google says it's also tweaking its ad-focused AdMob platform to help developers devise better targeted and therefore theoretically more alluring in-app purchases. For anyone not attending the relevant GDC sessions, Google says it'll live-stream them on YouTube, starting tomorrow at 100 p.m. ET.