5 ways Google Play game services could top iOS Game Center

Would it shock you to learn that Apple's online social gaming network for iOS, Game Center, was announced just over three years ago? It surprised the hell out of me.

So the question for all Android gamers is, what has Google being doing in that time?

Of course it's had other, rather more pressing, things on its mind, such as dragging the Android platform as a whole into contention.

The current version of the Google Play Store is a tribute to this work - crisp, stylish, innovative, and filled with a good number of apps and games. Still, Android has lacked that games-oriented glue to rubber stamp Android as a viable gaming platform.

It's taken a fair old while, then, but Google has finally come up with Android's own Game Center in the form of Google Play game services.

Here are five ways in which we think it could top Apple's neglected gaming service.

Game Center is, in a word, ugly. It's not that it's dated in the three years since its initial announcement - it has always been ugly. It marks the point at which Apple's obsession with skeuomorphism got silly.

As I noted in an opinion piece at around the time of its release, "it looks like a cheap online poker application."

So what can Google do about it? If you still think that the search giant doesn't do attractive, intuitive interfaces, you clearly haven't been paying attention over the past year or two. Once again, we urge you to take a look at the latest Google Play Store, or the company's recently revamped Google Music service.

Put simply, the company now 'gets' interface design, and it doesn't tend to crowbar in related real-world elements in a cringe-inducing attempt at relevance.

In the case of Google Play game services, that means clean, crisp pop-up icons - and the absence of any big ugly hubs. Which brings us to...

Unlike Game Center, Google Play game services isn't a separate service set apart from the wider ecosystem. It's a tightly integrated set of APIs allowing for achievements, online high scores, and various other social gaming provisions, but using the pre-existing Google+ social network as its binding agent.

We'll discuss Google+ in a moment, but the simple point here is that Google is striving to integrate its own social gaming into everyday usage - and as such it has much more of a shot at actually being used. After all, when was the last time you opened up Game Center?

Let's get straight onto Google+ then, shall we? Regardless of whether you've adopted Google+ as your social network of choice (you probably haven't), the chances are you're pretty much signed up already.

Like it or not, it's very much a large part of Google's rapidly converging ecosystem now. This means that if you use Gmail, Maps, Google Play, Google Drive, or any of the other Google services, then you're already prepped and ready to roll with Google+.

Even if you don't use it to share your pictures and daily thoughts in the same way as you do Facebook, it should, at the very least, prove to be a solid and intuitive way to share high scores and invite contacts to compete in an online game - with the potential for more besides.

This is a core difference between Apple and Google as much as a difference between its respective social gaming networks. Apple takes care of itself, and its iOS platform. Anything else can swivel.

This is fine. In fact, it's what makes the iPhone and iPad such slick, self-contained devices. But it also limits certain activities, such as when you own the same game on an iOS and an Android device and want to maintain your progress across both.

The beauty of Google's solution is that it's platform agnostic. Sure, you can bet that it's mainly going to be used by Android developers, but Google is open about wanting iOS creators to incorporate these APIs too.

Of course, we don't know how widely these will be adopted, but the thought of starting a game on my iPad and continuing it on my HTC One X is an irresistible one. Thanks to Google, it's also a conceivable one.

One of our key criticisms of Game Center is that Apple hasn't done anything of note with it since it launched. It's just been left to stumble along (with a couple of inconsequential additions and tweaks) while other Apple services have been given all the attention.

Google won't make the same mistake. It's well known for improving, updating, and completely overhauling its apps and services on a regular basis. Sometimes this can be a little irritating, but in general it's hard to complain at this constantly evolving approach.

The key advantage here is that if there's something glaringly wrong or just plain missing with Google Play game services, you can bet it'll be addressed through an update pretty sharpish.