Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has appointed Noah Falstein as its Chief Game Designer, unofficially confirming the rumors that the company plans to move ahead to expand a native gaming presence on Android.
The news was first uncovered by TechCrunch, who noticed a new title as “Chief Game Designer at Android Play Studio” on Falstein’s LinkedIn profile. The news was later confirmed by The Verge.
The internet giant entered the gaming world last year with Ingress, a near-real-time online game developed by NianticLabs@Google. For long, there have been rumors of a gaming portal for Android, which have been further fueled by several sessions of Google I/O specifically for developing Android based mobile gaming.
It was revealed last month that Google was developing its own version to take on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s Game Center that allows multi-player gaming, global leaderboards, in-game chat and achievements.
Falstein has been associated with the gaming industry since 1980 and was one of the first to join LucasArts Entertainment. The veteran has worked on Sinistar, Battlehawks 1942, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, and Hungry Red Planet.
Falstein latest projects include a freelance design consultant to many studios including Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), LucasArts, and Disney. He also sits on the advisory board for the Games for Health Conference and Serious Games Summit.
Google+ came up with a games section way back in 2011, and since then developers have been coming out with the reports on their association with the Google+ Social Gaming Team. Ingress is one of the best titles from Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), which is an augmented reality social title that puts players against each other in the real world. The search engine giant enjoys a number of partnerships with third-party gaming titles in the Play market for Android phones and tablets. May be Falstein’s has been hired to develop more from this partnership along with producing some homegrown games.
It will be interesting to see what Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) plans to derive from the vast experience Falstein has in the non-traditional gaming. We might not have to wait for much long to get an answer as Google I/O is scheduled from May 15-17 in San Francisco.
