Play it forward: Evolving our platform for another decade of developer success
Posted by Alex Musil, Director of Product, Google Play It’s been a big milestone year for Google Play. Having just celebrated our 10th birthday, we’re looking ahead to the next 10 years and thinking about the ways our platform needs to evolve. To do that, we’re launching tons of new features to help you build more sustainable businesses and improve the experience for everyone in the Play ecosystem. We’ve always been committed to making Google Play a place for developers to build successful businesses, while helping users safely find high-quality content to enjoy. That’s why, over the last year, we’ve made several updates designed to help our developers in ways big and small, from major investments in new content to targeted beta programs to help you find your niche. So in case you missed any of our recent announcements, here’s a recap of all the big updates we’ve recently made to our platform. Supporting and rewarding great apps and games on Google PlayWe’re developing n
Posted by Alex Musil, Director of Product, Google Play
It’s been a big milestone year for Google Play. Having just celebrated our 10th birthday, we’re looking ahead to the next 10 years and thinking about the ways our platform needs to evolve. To do that, we’re launching tons of new features to help you build more sustainable businesses and improve the experience for everyone in the Play ecosystem.
We’ve always been committed to making Google Play a place for developers to build successful businesses, while helping users safely find high-quality content to enjoy. That’s why, over the last year, we’ve made several updates designed to help our developers in ways big and small, from major investments in new content to targeted beta programs to help you find your niche. So in case you missed any of our recent announcements, here’s a recap of all the big updates we’ve recently made to our platform.
Supporting and rewarding great apps and games on Google Play
We’re developing new ways to promote and support high-quality titles throughout the entire lifecycle, from acquisition and engagement to retention and reacquisition. That’s why, over the coming months, we’re rolling out enhancements to Google Play and Google Play Console that embed your key events, content, and offers across the Google Play experience.For select titles, LiveOps is a great way to reach users directly with offers, launches, and events. Soon, we’ll be expanding how your content is used on Google Play by creating new high-impact placements and formats. Because new content types will be added over time, we’re renaming LiveOps to “Promotional Content” to better reflect the breadth of content you can submit. Promotional Content is already available for thousands of titles and we're looking to expand to more developers next year.
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| New content formats will help users discover and rediscover high-quality content to enjoy. Final design may vary. |
Another key part of the lifecycle is bringing back users who’ve tried your title before. Rolling out towards the end of this year, Churned-user Custom Store Listings will enable you to tell a different story to users who’ve tried but uninstalled your apps or games. If you’d like to be one of the first to try this feature, let us know by filling out this form.
Raising the bar on technical quality
Android users expect a great experience from the apps and games they download, so we’re making higher-quality titles more visible on the Play Store and steering users away from lower-quality ones. One of the most important ways to boost your app quality and attract more users is to focus on technical quality. To do that, we’re implementing new quality thresholds that better align with the user experience.
GOOGLE PLAY’S APP QUALITY BAR To maximize visibility on Google Play, keep your app below these thresholds. | ||
| Core vital | Overall (across all devices) | Per phone model |
| User-perceived crash rate | 1.09% | 8% |
| User-perceived ANR rate | 0.47% | 8% |
Some apps and games that don’t meet these thresholds will be excluded from impactful discovery surfaces such as recommendations, while others may display a warning on their store listing to set appropriate user expectations.
Check out this blog post to learn more about these changes, plus new features in Android vitals to help you monitor and act on technical issues and opportunities.
A more flexible and powerful commerce platform
This year, we’ve made improvements across our commerce platform, including an improved purchase experience, more flexibility and control over your subscriptions, and new monetization insights and programs to help you boost your revenue.
For example, we’ve improved the purchase flow for purchases made by a child or family member account. Parents or the “family manager” can now make purchases on behalf of their child without setting up a family payment method. Now when a family member tries to make a purchase in your app without a family payment method set up, we’ll send a purchase request to the family manager. The family manager can then complete the purchase with any payment method, including gift cards.
For more commerce updates, check out our blog post.
Keeping Google Play Safe with New Features and Programs
Our safety initiatives and policies evolve to help developers like you launch trusted experiences to more than 2.5 billion users around the world.
First, we’re launching new Play Integrity API features to help you defend against unknown, risky traffic. You can customize your API responses and set up tests in Play Console, and use new reporting to analyze and break down API responses across your install base. And, soon, you’ll be able to debug Integrity API responses from the Play Store app’s developer settings on any device.
Second, we’re launching multiple programs to better partner with you. We’re helping protect your apps against inaccurate, coordinated review attacks, providing more communication and global training about our policies and how to comply, and expanding pilots on direct phone support and enforcement strike removal.
And finally, our Developer Previews offer a more privacy-friendly approach to advertising. Please share your Privacy Sandbox feedback with us as we continue to build this multi-year program alongside our advertising industry and developer partners.
Google Play Games beta on PC continues global expansion
Earlier this year, we announced that Google Play Games would be coming to PCs as a beta experience to a limited number of markets. In August, we expanded the product to all players in Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Australia. Beginning today, we’re excited to make Google Play Games beta available for download to all players in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore.
In the last few months, our Google Play Games catalog growth has been accelerating with many popular mobile titles including 1945 Air Force, Blade Idle, Cookie Run: Kingdom, and Evony: The King’s Return. All of these titles and dozens more can be played on Windows PCs via a standalone application built by Google.
This program builds on our goal of meeting players where they are, giving them access to their games on as many devices as possible. Additionally, since launching earlier this year we have made significant strides to reach even more players by reducing the minimum spec requirements to PCs running Windows 10+ with an integrated graphics card and 4+ core CPU. To learn more, check out our blog post.
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| Android games can be seamless synced across signed-in devices with Google Play Games. |
Thank you for being a part of the Google Play ecosystem, whether you’ve recently joined or been with us since the beginning. Together, we’re looking forward to another 10 exciting years.
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