Where is Android Going With Gaming?

Recently, there has been quite a bit of news surrounding Google, and in particular with its Android operating system, that it makes me wonder where Google is heading in the video game market. While it’s mainly known for its search and advertising, pushing into the world of video games is an interesting play (no pun intended) for the Mountain View based company.

Gaining Market Share Over Apple

At the beginning of this year, shipment of Android phones worldwide were nearly 70%, while Apple’s was nearly 20%. Here in the US, the story is a bit different, with Apple still as the king with over 53% market share, but Android is inching closer with a nearly 42% market share.

On the game side of things, I wonder where things are now? As I mentioned in my observations at GDC 2013, it was difficult to find someone using an iPhone (I tried really hard), and these are the developers of the games. While there was plenty of iOS based games featured during the conference, with the way Android is moving now, and with more game developers using non-iOS phones, I wonder if in a few years, gaming on the iPhone will be much smaller?

On the tablet end, Android is also rapidly gaining market share, according to IDC, which reports a 247.5% year-over-year growth for Android versus Apple’s 65.3%. Additionally, market share for the two OSes has virtually flipped, with Q1  2012 market share being 58.1% and 39.4% for iOS and Android, respectively, to Q1 2013 market share being 39.6% and 56.5% for iOS and Android, respectively.

Google Hires a Chief Game Designer

A little under the radar, but Google has recently named Noah Falstein as the company’s newly appointed Chief Game Designer. For a company that isn’t known for gaming, it’s a bit mysterious as to what Google has in store, and there really isn’t any information of what his role will be in the future.  Looking at his resume, we can see that he is a video game veteran, with an impressive list of roles at LucasArts, 3DO and Dreamworks Interactive to name a few, but older gamers such as myself will appreciate the fact that he was the project lead on Williams’ arcade classic Sinistar. His new title looks like it is just shortened from the previous title of “Chief Game Designer of Android Play Studio”, as reported by TechCrunch, which discovered this change in his LinkedIn Profile.

With Google hot on the heels of Apple for the smartphone and tablet space, and bringing in a Chief Game Designer, I wonder what is in store for gaming with Google in the future? Will we start seeing interesting games on the Google Glasses project?  Maybe Google will start producing more games for Android? (They already have their mysterious “Niantic Labs” that produces the AR game, Ingress.) Or maybe they plan to get people re-interested in Google + by putting some exclusive games in there? (Seems impossible, but never know.)

So what do you think? Do you think that Google will take over the world by saturating the market with its Android OS in every device out there? Does that frighten you? Do you think Google has the ability to make great games?