With more and more manufacturers creating gaming phones and successful online video games like Fortnite coming to Android, it makes sense for Google to want to support developers in any way it can. Apparently, Google is working on its own “Android Game SDK” based on Vulkan and the Android NDK.
As we all know, Android is the most popular operating system in the world, and it’s no surprise that Android has become a popular platform for new games to be developed. This includes 3D games like PUBG and Fortnite, which are in high demand. However, these games are very complex for developers. So to give them better control over the intricate details of 3D graphics and not have to optimize for each individual Android device, Google is working on a project it has called the “Android Game SDK.” The company had made this move public since September, and in particular, the SDK includes a library, Swappy, which is built on top of the Vulkan graphics API and seems to be designed to give Android game developers “fine-grained” control over things like swap interval.
One of Google's goals for the Android Game SDK is to improve 3D engine performance on Android. In fact, one of the samples is intended for use only by Unity. Of course, this is not the first time Google has collaborated with Unity on projects, as we know from the past that Unity founder John Riccitiello appeared at Google I/O 2016 to help demonstrate Daydream VR.
It's still too early to tell what improvements Unity or other engines will see when using the Android Game SDK, and it'll probably be several months before we hear anything official. However, Google seems to be taking things a step further with Android Gaming.
