OpenFeint PlayTime – Multiplayer Gaming for iOS and Android
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Yesterday’s announcement by Apple about their new Game Center app brought a lot of excitement to the gaming community. Of course, Game Center brings social networking capabilities to your gaming experience. It allows easier access to online multiplayer games and will give you the ability to see what games your friends are playing and their results.
Today, it looks like iOS gamers have more to celebrate. Aurora Feint, a mobile gaming company, announced that it plans to release a development kit called PlayTime that will allow its OpenFeint social network to enable inter-connectivity between iOS and Android devices. In other words, game developers will be able to create games that can be played in real-time across iOS and Android devices. Aurora Feint mentioned it will launch PlayTime later this year.
According to Aurora Feint, their Open Feint PlayTime service will allow gamers to enter into a multi-player gaming experience, do matchmaking, and do real-time voice chat during gameplay. PlayTime will be fully compatible with Apple’s Game Center. In addition, the service will include a feature that allows multiplayer games to stay in play even if one player drops out due to a bad connection. The service provides the ability to substitute a computer opponent for a dropped player.
It’s no mystery that over the last couple of years, smartphones have quickly become powerful game consoles. This was proven yesterday when gaming company Epic showcased their Epic Citadel game demo at the Apple event.
Mobile devices have quickly become widely accepted gaming platforms because they are displaying amazing graphics across many games. But, one big issue thus far has been the amount of effort required to develop cross-compatibility between various mobile devices. It seems that companies like Aurora Feint are quickly addressing that issue.
