Adding to its suite of social gaming services, PlayPhone has unveiled a new cross-platform multiplayer API designed to seamlessly link players on iOS and Android in "milliseconds".

The new tool, dubbed InstaMultiplay, has been added to the firm's existing Social Gaming Network (SGN) SDK to enable developers to build in mutiplayer into their games without the need for additional back-end support.

Perfect match

Games that utilise InstaMultiplay will allow players to take on friends, enter a lobby environment to take on random players from around the globe, or – presumably in a move designed to keep less popular games active – take on AI controlled opponents, otherwise known as 'computer managed robots'.

"Social gaming on smartphones and tablets is a burgeoning sector that places a heavy burden on developers to innovate, acquire users and monetise in real time," said PlayPhone founder and CEO Ron Czerny

"The development of InstaMultiplay is a major technical feat for our engineering team. They accepted this challenge to alleviate the financial and tactical load on developers of having to implement their own server infrastructure in order to manage cross-platform multiplayer gaming."

PlayPhone claims an InstaMultiplay demo showcased at GDC 2012 in San Francisco illustrated how iPhone players could be matched against others on iOS or those on Android in less than a quarter of a second via a 3G connection.

Its launch comes after PlayPhone acquired marketing specialist Social Hour for $51.5 million in stock in a bid to add cross-promotion tools to the network.

[source: BusinessWire]