We’ve known Google has been taking a new liking to social games lately, as evidenced by recent acquisitions. It was unclear, however, just what Google’s plan was in this space. While we still probably don’t have the whole picture, the company did show off one aspect of its plans at GDC Europe, this week.
That aspect would be browser-based HTML5 games at the Chrome web store, first revealed at Google I/O in May.
1up.com talks about the presentation, shows slides, and provides the following video of part of the presentation from Google game developer advocate Mark DeLoura and Chrome developer advocate Michael Mahemoff.
The store will use Google Checkout for purchases and apps will come with customer reviews and friends’ ratings. There is also apparently no approval process for getting content posted to the store.
When the store launches in October, it will offer free and paid apps with support for free trials as well as subscriptions. There is no revenue share. There’s only a processing fee, and use of other in-app payment platforms is permitted. In the first half of next year, Google expects to include multi-currency support and in-app transactions.