Amazon Announces GameCircle

With the recent announcement of Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, the rumored small iPad, and the Windows 8 tablet, Amazon adds something to still interest users.

Recently, Amazon announced the launch of GameCircle for the Kindle Fire. Amazon said that “GameCircle will make achievements, leaderboard and sync APIs accessible, simple and quick for [developers] to integrate, and give gamers a more seamless and entertaining in-game experience.”

“Our goal is to give developers great tools to quickly and easily reach new customers and keep them engaged. That’s why we’re creating easy-to-integrate APIs for features like leaderboards, achievements and sync.  We also introduced In-App Purchasing API in April, allowing developers to offer a seamless 1-Click purchasing experience within their apps and games, and we’re just getting started. GameCircle gives developers the right tools to build an immersive, more entertaining experience on Kindle Fire, which will ultimately help developers grow their business.” -Paul Ryder, Vice President of Apps, Games, and Services at Amazon

It seems pretty clear that GameCenter has a lot of inspiration from Apple’s Game Center and Microsoft Xbox Live’s Achievements. Although Amazon had much of its inspiration from Apple’s Game Center, Apple had a lot of inspiration from Microsoft’s Xbox Live. Though it has a lot of ideas from other sources, it does not have multiplayer gaming capabilities like the Xbox Live and Apple’s Game Center.

Right now, Amazon has already tested apps like Doodle Jump, Temple Run, and Triple Town with the new GameCircle service.

You can sign up for access to the GameCircle APIs by visiting:http://amazon.com/gamecircle-signup.