Google Play Services 4.1 Rolling Out with Better Ads Support, Turn-Based Multiplayer

It's been less than three months since Google Play Services 4.0 was made official and now it looks like the search giant has released another updated version, which brings even more features aimed at Android developers and users alike.

First and foremost, it's been confirmed that the new Google Play Services 4.1 adds support for turn-based multiplayer, which will allow devs to create much better asynchronous multiplayer games for fans of the genre. According to Google, the new feature supports 2-8 players per game.

“When players take turns, their turn data is uploaded to Play Services and shared with other players automatically,” says Google in a blog post.

But that's not all. Google also states that it is providing a new “Connecting to Play Games” transition animation during sign-in, which is optional. This new transition has been made available before the permission dialog appears.

The next improvement included in this version of Play Services is the developer preview of the new Google Drive API for Android. It provides devs with the option to read and write files in Google Drive, so that they can be made available across devices online.

Thanks to the new API, users will also be able to work with files offline, as changes will be synced with Google Drive automatically when they reconnect. A save dialog and a file picker are also among the new stuff included in the API.

Next in line is better Google+ integration. According to Google, “an improved Google+ sharing experience makes it even easier for users to share with the right people from your app. It includes better auto-complete and suggested recipients from Gmail contacts, device contacts and people on Google+.”

Last but not least, the latest version of Play Services brings support for DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Ads for Mobile Aps to Google Mobile Ads SDK.

Developers will now be able to take advantage of the newly provided location API in order to allow Google to pinpoint their location when requesting ads. That is supposed to improve application monetization.