Welcome to Google Developer Day at Game Developer Conference 2017

Posted by Paul Bankhead, Director, Product Management, Google Play 

Mobile gaming is more popular than ever. Over the past year, we saw breakout hits, including Pokemon GO, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, Clash Royale and Reigns introduce new, high quality gaming experiences on Google Play. Gamers around the world were also able to access Google Play more easily than ever before, helping developers reach a larger audience and grow their businesses. In 2016, nearly 300 million new (30 day active) users adopted Android devices from emerging markets such as India, Brazil, and Indonesia. And last year, more than 100 million new users were able to access locally relevant forms of payments (such as direct carrier billing or gift cards) helping more people globally access and buy their favorite apps and games on Google Play.

We've also focused heavily on polishing our software and hardware offerings to improve the overall gaming experience on Android. The release of Nougat delivered high-performance realtime 3D graphics with the Vulkan API and the launch of Pixel phones provided the first Daydream-ready devices tailored for immersive mobile VR. Elsewhere, the expansion of Firebase provided the tools and infrastructure to support developers throughout the lifecycle of their game with features like real-time analytics, push notifications, storage, and ads. To streamline the integration, Firebase is now completely available for C++ and Unity developers.

NEW FEATURES TO HELP YOU SUCCEED ON GOOGLE PLAY

Today, during our annual Developer Day at the Game Developers Conference, we introduced new tools to improve the overall discovery on Google Play, especially supporting developers who build high quality and engaging games.

• Promoting high quality experiences based on engagement, not just installs: With the enormous variety of games available on Google Play, there are many instances when great games don't get the visibility and attention they deserve. Recently, we've begun tuning our algorithms to optimize for user engagement, not just downloads. This is one of our ways to reward quality, which for games means promoting titles with stickiness (strong engagement and retention metrics) as well as a more traditional measure like a high star rating.

• Offer sales and increase purchases of premium games with strikethrough pricing: Available in the Google Play Developer Console starting today, strikethrough pricing allows developers to run their own price promotions on paid apps and games leading to greater awareness and conversion. During our pilot phase, developers not only saw a 3x–20x lift in installs during their promotions, they also maintained a nice lift once the sales ended.

• More curation of high quality games through editorial pages: One more way we'll highlight quality games is through new editorial pages on the Play store launching later this month. These pages allow our editors to hand-select games exemplifying optimal gaming experiences on Android. They allow users to explore different game styles and genres with editorial reviews on themes such as epic RPGs and top racing games.

UPCOMING GAMES ON GOOGLE PLAY

At our Developer Day, we also gave attendees a sneak peek at some high-fidelity games coming to Google Play later this year. Including titles from major studios to indies, and even two new VR titles, there's something for every gamer!

Available for pre-registration on Google Play

• TRANSFORMERS: Forged to Fight by Kabam is a new high-definition, action-fighting mobile game set in an immersive world. The game will feature authentic Transformers "more than meets the eye" action, allowing players to engage with Optimus Prime, Megatron and many other popular Autobots and Decepticons in a stunning 3D environment. The game will be available worldwide on April 5, 2017.
• Battle Breakers is a new frenetic tactical role-playing game from Epic Games, powered by Unreal Engine 4. A vibrant fantasy sci-fi cartoon adventure, Battle Breakers lets you recruit and build a dream team from hundreds of unique heroes to battle monsters as you take back the Kingdom, one break at a time!
• Injustice 2 lets you guide your stable of Super Heroes and Villains to victory. Expanding on the hit game Injustice: Gods Among Us, Injustice 2 delivers brand new characters, tons of exciting new modes and the look and fighting style that NetherRealm Studios is known for. Injustice 2 will be available on Google Play for Android devices in May.

Coming soon

• Virtual Rabbids is the first VR Rabbids experience on mobile developed by Ubisoft Montpellier in collaboration with Bucharest. Available this spring on Daydream, players will find themselves in some of the most precarious situations as they race to save the planet.
• Beartopia is a cooperative multiplayer village game by Spry Fox. Make friends, work together and grow a thriving community.

Later this afternoon, we'll host a series of lightning talks to share what it takes to launch successful VR and AR games, build with Firebase, implement machine learning in your game, and so much more. Visit our site for more info and the Google Developer Day schedule. For those who can't make it in person, watch the live stream!

This is just the start of what we have planned for 2017. We hope you can make use of these tools to improve your games, engage your audience, and grow your business and revenue.

How useful did you find this blogpost?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

                                                                              

Keeping up to Date with the Support Library

Posted by Agustin Fonts, Product Manager, Android Support Library

It's important to keep current when you're dealing with technology. That’s why we're constantly working to improve the quality of our software, particularly libraries that are linked into your apps, such as the Support Library.  The Support Library is a suite of libraries that provides backward compatibility along with additional features across many Android releases.

We have just released version 25.2 of the Support Library.  If you're making use of the android.support.v7.media.MediaRouter class in revision 25.1.1 or 25.1.0, we strongly recommend that you update due to a known issue.  If you haven't updated recently, you've missed out on some great bug fixes such as these:

25.2:

• Corrected a severe mediarouter issue in which using an A2DP Bluetooth device and media routing APIs could cause the device to become unresponsive, requiring a reboot
• Showing a slide presentation with screen mirroring no longer causes the device to disconnect from Wi-Fi
• Media button now properly handles media apps that did not register themselves with setMediaButtonReceiver()
• TextInputLayout correctly overlays hint and text if text is set by XML (AOSP issue 230171)
• Corrected a memory leak in MediaControllerCompat (AOSP issue 231441)
• RecyclerView no longer crashes when recycling view holders (AOSP issue 225762)

Reporting (and fixing) a Bug

The Support Library is developed by the Android Framework and Developer Relations teams, and, just like the Android platform, you can file bugs using the AOSP issue tracker, or submit fixes to our Git repository. Your feedback is critical in helping us to make the Support Library the most productive environment to use for developing Android applications.

Publish your app with confidence from the Google Play Developer Console

Posted by Kobi Glick, Product Manager, Google Play

Publishing a new app, or app update, is an important and exciting milestone for every developer. In order to make the process smoother and more trackable, we're announcing the launch of a new way to publish apps on Google Play with some new features. The changes will give you the ability to manage your app releases with more confidence via a new manage releases page in the Google Play Developer Console.

Manage your app updates with clarity and control

The new manage releases page is where you upload alpha, beta, and production releases of your app. From here, you can see important information and the status of all your releases across tracks.

The new manage releases page.

Easier access to existing and new publishing features

Publishing an app or update is a big step, and one that every developer wants to have confidence in taking. To help, we've added two new features.

First, we've added a validation step that highlights potential issues before you publish. The new "review and rollout" page will appear before you confirm the roll out of a new app and flag if there are validation errors or warnings. This new flow will make the app release process easier, especially for apps using multi-APK. It also provides new information; for example, in cases where you added new permissions to your app, the system will highlight it.

Second, it's now simpler to perform and track staged roll-outs during the publishing flow. With staged rollouts, you can release your update to a growing % of users, giving you a chance to catch and address any issues before affecting your whole audience.

If you want to review the history of your releases, it is now possible to track them granularly and download previous APKs.

Finally we've added a new artifacts library under manage releases where you can find all the files that help you manage a release.

Start using the new manage releases page today

You can access the new manage releases page in the Developer Console. Visit the Google Play Developer Help Center for more information. With these changes, we're helping you to publish, track and manage your app with confidence on Google Play.

How useful did you find this blogpost?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

                                                                              

Build flexible layouts with FlexboxLayout

Posted by Takeshi Hagikura, Developer Programs Engineer

At Google I/O last year we announced ConstraintLayout, which enables you to build complex layouts while maintaining a flat view hierarchy. It is also fully supported in Android Studio's Visual Layout Editor.

At the same time, we open sourced FlexboxLayout to bring the same functionalities of the CSS Flexible Layout module to Android. Here are some cases where FlexboxLayout is particularly effective.

FlexboxLayout can be interpreted as an advanced LinearLayout because both layouts align their child views sequentially. The significant difference between LinearLayout and FlexboxLayout is that FlexboxLayout has a feature for wrapping.

That means if you add the flexWrap="wrap" attribute, FlexboxLayout puts a view to a new line if there is not enough space left in the current line as shown in the picture below.

One layout for various screen sizes

With that characteristic in mind, let's take a case where you want to put views sequentially but have them move to new lines if the available space changes (due to a device factor, orientation changes or the window resizing in the multi-window mode).

Nexus5X portrait

Nexus5X landscape

Pixel C with multi window mode enabled, divider line on the left.

Pixel C with multi window mode enabled, divider line on the middle.

Pixel C with multi window mode enabled, divider line on the right.

You would need to define multiple DP-bucket layouts (such as layout-600dp, layout-720dp, layout-1020dp) to handle various screen sizes with traditional layouts such as LinearLayout or RelativeLayout. But the dialog above is built with a single FlexboxLayout.

The technique used in the example is setting the flexWrap="wrap" as explained above,

<com .google.android.flexbox.flexboxlayout 
     android:layout_width="match_parent" 
     android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
     app:flexwrap="wrap">

then you can get the following layout where child views are aligned to a new line instead of overflowing its parent.

Another technique I'd like to highlight is setting the layout_flexGrow attribute to an individual child. This helps improve the look of the final layout when free space is left over. The layout_flexGrow attribute works similar to the layout_weight attribute in LinearLayout. That means FlexboxLayout will distribute the remaining space according to the layout_flexGrow value set to each child in the same line.

In the example below, it assumes each child has the layout_flexGrow attribute set to 1, so free space will be evenly distributed to each of them.

 <android .support.design.widget.TextInputLayout
     android:layout_width="100dp"
     android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
     app:layout_flexgrow="1">

You can check out the complete layout xml file in the GitHub repository.

RecyclerView integration 

Another advantage of FlexboxLayout is that it can be integrated with RecyclerView. With the latest release of the alpha version the new FlexboxLayoutManager extends RecyclerView.LayoutManager, now you can make use of the Flexbox functionalities in a scrollable container in much more memory-efficient way.

Note that you can still achieve a scrollable Flexbox container with FlexboxLayout wrapped with ScrollView. But, you will be likely to experience jankiness or even an OutOfMemoryError if the number of items contained in the layout is large, as FlexboxLayout doesn't take view recycling into account for the views that go off the screen as the user scrolls.

(If you would like to learn more about the RecyclerView in details, you can check out the videos from the Android UI toolkit team such as 1, 2)

A real world example where the RecyclerView integration is useful is for apps like the Google Photos app or News apps, both expect large number of items while needing to handle various width of items.

One example is found in the demo application in the FlexboxLayout repository. As you can see in the repository, each image shown in RecyclerView has a different width. But by setting the flexWrap setting to wrap,

FlexboxLayoutManager layoutManager = new FlexboxLayoutManager();
layoutManager.setFlexWrap(FlexWrap.WRAP);

and setting the flexGrow (as you can see, you can configure the attributes through FlexboxLayoutManager and FlexboxLayoutManager.LayoutParams for child attributes instead of configuring it from xml) attribute to a positive value for each child,

void bindTo(Drawable drawable) {
  mImageView.setImageDrawable(drawable);
  ViewGroup.LayoutParams lp = mImageView.getLayoutParams();
  if (lp instanceof FlexboxLayoutManager.LayoutParams) {
    FlexboxLayoutManager.LayoutParams flexboxLp = 
        (FlexboxLayoutManager.LayoutParams) mImageView.getLayoutParams();
    flexboxLp.setFlexGrow(1.0f);
  }
}

you can see every image fits within the layout nicely regardless of the screen orientation.

If you would like to see complete FlexboxLayout example, you can check:

• Playground demo app - using FlexboxLayout and FlexboxLayoutManager.
• Cat gallery demo app - using FlexboxLayoutManager

What's next?

Check out the full documentation for other attributes to build flexible layouts tailored for your needs. We're very open to hear your feedback, if you find any issues or feature requests, please file an issue on the GitHub repository.

And the winners of the Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe are...

Posted by Matteo Vallone, Google Play Games Business Development

Today, at Saatchi Gallery in London, we hosted the final event of the first Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe. The 20 finalists, selected from nearly 1000 submissions, came from 12 countries to showcase their games to an excited room of gamers, industry experts and press. Selected based on the votes of the attendees and the Google Play team, the Top 10 pitched in front of a jury of industry experts who chose the top winners.

Stay tuned for more pictures and a video of the event.

Without further ado, join us in congratulating the winners!

Winner & Unity prize winner:

Reigns, by Nerial, from the United Kingdom You are the King. For each decision, you only have two choices. Survive the exercise of power and the craziness of your advisors... as long as you can.

Runners up:

	The Battle of Polytopia, by Midjiwan AB, from Sweden A turn based strategic adventure. It's a game about ruling the world, fighting evil AI tribes, discovering new lands and mastering new technologies.
	Causality, by Loju, from the United Kingdom A puzzle about manipulating time, altering the sequence of events and changing the outcome of each level to help a group of astronauts find a route to safety.

The other top games selected by the event attendees and the Google Play team are:

	Blind Drive, by Lo-Fi People, from Israel You're driving blindfolded as a mysterious voice gives you suicidal commands on the phone. Survive on-rushing vehicles using only your hearing to guide you.
	Gladiabots, by GFX47, from France A competitive tactical game in which you design the AI of your robot squad. Use your own strategy, refine it online and fight for the top of the leaderboard.
	Happy Hop: Kawaii Jump, by Platonic Games, from Spain This isn't just an original one-tap endless hopper, it's also the cutest one. Ever wondered what's in the end of the rainbow? That would be Happy Hop.
	Lost in Harmony, by Digixart Entertainment, from France Experience music in a new way with the combination of rhythmic tapping and choreographic runner to go through two memorable journeys with Kaito and M.I.R.A.I.
	Paper Wings, by Fil Games, from Turkey A fast-paced arcade game which puts you in control of an origami bird. Avoid the hazards and collect the falling coins to keep your paper bird alive.
	Pinout, by Mediocre, from Sweden A breathtaking pinball arcade experience: race against time in a continuous journey through this canyon of pulsating lights and throbbing retro wave beats.
	Rusty Lake: Roots, by Rusty Lake, from Netherlands James Vanderboom's life drastically changes when he plants a special seed in the garden. Expand your bloodline by unlocking portraits in the tree of life.

Check out the prizes

The prizes of this contest were designed to help the winners showcase their art and grow their business on Android and Google Play, including:

• YouTube influencer campaigns worth up to 100,000 EUR
• Premium placements on Google Play
• Tickets to Google I/O 2017 and other top industry events
• Promotions on our channels
• Special prizes for the best Unity game
• And more!

What’s next?

The week is not over just yet for Indie games developers. Tomorrow we are hosting the Indie Games Workshop for all indie games developers from across EMEA in the new Google office in Kings Cross.

It’s been really inspiring to see the enthusiasm around this inaugural edition, and the quality and creativity of the indie games developed across the eligible European countries. We are looking forward to bringing a new edition of the contest to you in late 2017.

How useful did you find this blogpost?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

                                                                              

Tips for building high-quality and accessible financial services apps

Posted by Joel Newman & Ashraf Hassan, Strategic Partnerships, Finance, Google Play

Millions of people around the globe have limited or no access to basic financial services to enable them to manage their day-to-day finances. Mobile technology can help bridge this gap by connecting historically underserved consumers with high-quality tools to help them improve their financial health.

Often faced with an uncertain regulatory environment and/or a highly fragmented financial marketplace, many developers struggle with building great app experiences while also navigating this complex financial space. That's why we recently worked with CFSI, the authority on consumer financial health, to create the FinTech App Development Compass, a six-step guide for building high quality mobile apps to make financial services more accessible on Google Play.

Below, we're sharing six tips to consider when building a financial services app. For more, read the complete FinTech App Development Compass.

Tip 1: Know Your User
Understand who your consumer is and what difference your product can make in their day-to-day life. What are their financial needs? How can your product improve their financial health? How does your product fit within the context of their financial lives?

Tip 2: Focus on Access
Responsibly expand access to your product. Consider how your product can fit seamlessly into your users' routines. Consider your users' circumstances, including that English may not be their first language and that they may be using older devices with limited data plans.

Tip 3: Establish and Maintain Trust
Trust is at a premium in the financial space. Make sure you are developing mutually beneficial financial solutions that deliver clear and consistent value. Similarly, make sure you are using the latest security tools available from the Android platform to secure your users' data.

Tip 4: Test and Iterate

Before releasing any product to the public, make sure it has been thoroughly tested. From a financial perspective, be sure to measure the actual impact of your product on users over time. From a technological perspective, be sure to leverage Google Play alpha and beta channels for distributing apps before their public release.

Tip 5: Drive Positive User Behavior
Drive positive consumer behavior through smart design and communication. Leverage the Android platform tools like Material Design and notifications to steer users toward positive action or take financial action at appropriate times.

Tip 6: Recognize the Value of Mutual Success
Remember that the best business models are win-win: If your users' financial health improves, your company profits. Consider embedding financial impact and technological tracking capabilities within your platform from the beginning.

For additional information, refer to the CFSI Compass Principles and get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date with more features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

How useful did you find this blogpost?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★