Amazon.com, introduced "GameCircle," a new gaming experience for Kindle Fire, and released a series of APIs for developers to add this new experience to their games.
GameCircle is a new set of services designed to make it easier for game developers to create more engaging gaming experiences and grow their businesses on Kindle Fire. GameCircle will make achievements, leaderboards and sync APIs accessible, simple and quick for developers to integrate.
Achievements allow players to track all earned trophies, treasures, badges, awards and more while they're playing games on their Kindle Fire. Players won't have to leave a game to receive messages, get updates or track accolades. They can also pause a game, view an achievements summary, determine what badges are still needed or desired, and then return to gameplay.
Leaderboards provide an in-game view of score comparison information and percentile ranking, allowing players to quickly check standings against other players without ever leaving the game.
Sync automatically saves players' in-game progress to the cloud and allows them to pick up exactly where they left off when restoring a deleted game or switching between their devices. All data is stored for free in the cloud.
Amazon also released GameCircle APIs, which will help game developers integrate their games with GameCircle. Developers can access the GameCircle APIs by visiting http://amazon.com/gamecircle.
"We have received extremely positive feedback from developers on our recently launched In-App Purchasing API with its easy 1-Click purchasing, and now we're excited to add yet another reason to be a game developer for Kindle Fire," said Paul Ryder, Vice President of Apps and Games at Amazon. "The new GameCircle APIs mean that developers don't have to worry about building leaderboards, achievements or sync in their games - they can focus on the elements of their games that are truly unique while building an immersive, more entertaining experience on Kindle Fire. This will quickly help developers grow their business by reaching more customers and keeping them engaged."
Amazon has been already offering games for its Kindle Fire 7-inch device.
GameCircle draws cues from Apple's Game Center, which is an online multiplayer social gaming network. It allows iOS app users the ability to invite friends, start multiplayer games, track achievements, and compare scores on a leaderboard.
Google was looking to develop a similar system for Android, according to reports in May.
According to rumors, a Kindle Fire 2 is expected to launch this summer.
