Where next for Apple's little-loved Game Center service?
Launched way back in 2010 when thirdparty social gaming networks such as OpenFeint and Plus+ were starting to find traction, Apple's Game Center was an attempt to create an iOS-only social layer for mobile gamers.
Its history since then has been patchy,
Most notable has been the 'white screen of death' which many players experienced when iOS 9 was released.
Of course, the fact that no one really seemed to care about this suggested that no one cared about Game Center itself.
The result has been that the Game Center app has been removed in the release of the iOS 10 beta.
Where next?
Of course, this doesn't mean that Game Center as a service is dead.
Developers will still be able to integrate some of Game Center's functionality such as leaderboards within their games using the GameKit SDK.
It seems unlikely that Game Center will receive much future attention from Apple.
However, it seems unlikely that Game Center will receive much future attention from Apple, a company that's never much cared about mobile gaming.
This is particularly the case as Apple is opening up some of its more useful proprietary apps - iMessage, Siri, Maps etc - to thirdparty developers.
Indeed, the move comes as part of a wider rethink about how Apple firstparty services operate, as it's also letting people delete some Apple apps (Stock, Weather, Music etc).
In the case of Game Center, though, it seems as if so few people actually used it - at least as an app - Apple has removed it entirely.
