Google Courts Game Developers With a New Site and Free Netbooks, Tablets & Phones
Google didn't just give a free a Chrome OS netbook and either a Motorola Xoom tablet or Nexus S phone to every developer at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco this week, but also just launched a new hub for game developers who want to use Google's own tools.
Google Game Developer Central provides developers with information about Google tools and standards like GWT, WebGL and HTML5. Google, of course, would also like these developers to use AdMob and AdSense to monetize these games.
As Apple unveiled the new iPad 2 this morning, Steve Jobs took a direct jab at Google, pointing out that there are currently only about 100 apps for Honeycomb tablets and over 65,000 for the iPad. While Apple's presentation today didn't mention too many games, the improved graphics will make the iPad an even better platform for game developers. To counter this, Google needs to get more game developers on its platforms.
Giving away freebies at conferences has long been a tradition for Google and others are doing the same now, too. Microsoft gave free Windows Phones to everybody at its Professional Developer conference this year (excluding members of the press), which surely helped Microsoft garner extra support from its developer ecosystem.