There were a couple of new announcements made with regards to Google Play this morning, Ellie Powers, Product Manager, Google Play spoke about the new features announcing two major new additions in Google Play – Google Play Games and Google Play Text Books.
Google Play Games – is a gaming hub, that is run from an app that can be downloaded from Google Play. The app allows you to discover new games and track all your high scores as well as the social aspect of being able to compare your progress both with friends in your Google+ circles as well as on a global level.
The App is available now in Google Play for devices running Android 2.2 and upwards, it’s a 2MB download.
[app]com.google.android.play.games[/app]
Google Play Textbooks is a new service that Google is integrating as a part of Google Play Books and as an extension of their move into the education sector. The new addition will add textbooks from major textbook publishers Cengage, Wiley, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Macmillan, which can be purchased at full price or rented for six months at up to 80% off.
All of the usual Google Play Books features will be present such as search, bookmarks, highlights, notes, dictionary, Wikipedia lookups and night mode and as with all Google Play Books the service will be cross platform on both Web and Mobile. The service will be available in early August.
Both these services add things that Google is looking to expand with their entire Google Play eco-system, the social gaming aspect of Google Play Games along with the Chromecast dongle could allow them down the track to have an almost fully functional gaming system in the living room. The Google Play Textbooks builds on the Google Play for Education that was announced at Google IO, making the choice of Google services and hardware a little more attractive for Educational institutions.
