Apple offers fragmented unified social scene as Game Center goes live

Announced back in April when Steve Jobs previewed the iOS 4.0 SDK at WWDC 2010, Apple's default social gaming platform Game Center has gone live as part of the iOS 4.1 release.

Of course, it's not live for all Apple hardware with iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G and first generation iPod touches not being supported, while iPad won't get Game Center until the release of iOS 4.2 in November.

Plugged in

More importantly than the framework itself however is that games need to be updated with Game Center support in order for the functionality - including achievements, global leaderboards, challenges and peer-to-peer multiplayer - to become available.

Some, including Angry Birds, Real Racing, Flight Control and Dungeon Hunter 2, have already been announced, but we expect it to be a busy evening in terms of announcements as developers attempt to gain the attention of iOS 4.1 masses.

Indeed, only then will we get a proper idea how the system works, and whether it offers something new or is a tidying up exercise that will bring the sort of functionality already available from the likes of Scoreloop, Plus+ and OpenFeint to all iOS 4.1 users.