Google announces a new program that will offer tools to select game developers on Google Play

techcrunch.com:

Google made a handful of new announcements related to the Play Store at its Games Developer Summit this morning. Firstly, Google has launched a new“Google Play Partner Program for Games” to provide additional tools to the largest developers and studios on Google Play. The program targets develops that have “more than $5 million annually in games consumer spend.”

The benefits of the program include enhanced business support from Google Play, faster releases with a priority publishing queue and insights intro device attributes across the Google Play device ecosystem. It also includes pre-launch tools like pre-registration testing, access codes and store listing experiments for pre-registration campaigns. In addition, the program comes with additional security protection, including automatic approval for Play Integrity API usage. It also comes with invitations to early access programs and more. The company didn’t provide specific information about which Google Play game developers will get access to the new program.

Google also announced that the Play Store’s“Play as you download” feature is coming to all Android 12 users. Play as you download allows users to get into gameplay quickly after a small download while remaining game assets are fetched in the background. To do so, Google Play analyzes crowdsourced first-play experience filesystem access patterns and automatically identifies assets to optimize. The feature first launched as part of a beta program last year.

The company also revealed that it started to roll out the Google Play Games for PC Beta in select markets in January. The company says the standalone Windows PC application allows users to play a high quality catalog of Google Play games. The company shared that