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Even more incentive to play mobile games on Android… in Japan…

You may have already seen our Tweet, but Google Play Points – a service designed to give players one point for every 100-Yen they spend either on Google Play or buying virtual items is now live in Japan!

For mobile game developers, this is great! Not only can you create the incentive to play your games among players (by offering items which can be unlocked via Google Play Points), it is baked right into the Google Play Store and shared among every other app or game on a given user’s mobile device.

Sure cool, you now get points, what’s the big deal…?

Google Play has been lagging behind the Apple App Store in terms of “Paying Users” ever since it was established back in March of 2012, making the Apple App Store the go-to place for developers of premium apps and games for mobile.

We can assume that Google Play is attempting to change this by firstly creating more incentive among its dominant 88% market share (as opposed to Apple’s 11%) to actually buy stuff on Google Play – as well as encourage the developers of popular apps and games to “actually use” Google Play.

According to an article on TechCrunch, Google Play will loose an approximated $50 million or more from Fortnite’s decision to bypass the Google Play Store – potentially starting a new trend among game developers which would cut Google Play out of the equation…

Unfortunately, the Google Play Representative we talked with could not give us an answer as to whether or not Google Play Points would be available outside of Japan. 😞

We will just have to wait and see…

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