Google+ group product manager Punit Soni gave a presentation at the Game Developers Conference on Tuesday that promised a completely unified game platform from his company. He expected “by next year” to see Android, Chrome Web Store, Chrome Native Client, and Google+ games to all be unified. He didn’t explain how this would happen, VentureBeat said, although it’s implied that Google+ would emphasize HTML5 games on mobile, not just the desktop, and wouldn’t be locked into Android alone.
He anticipated features like Google+ Hangouts playing a role, and wanted better distribution of games than existed so far. Google+ games often don’t exist outside of a self-contained section. Paying for games would get easier as well, Soni said, with the ultimate aim of having a single place to play.
The social side is increasingly as important as search for Google, which is hoping to both prevent Facebook from dictating the web as well as to boost its existing content. Google+ mobile games would become equivalents to Facebook’s Project Spartan, an as yet unrealized plan to make completely HTML5-based games for the iPhone and Android that would skip the need for native apps.
