Google announced the new feature—called Play as You Download—coming to Android 12 this fall during Monday’s Google For Games Developers Summit, according to a blog post published on the Android Developers blog. “Play as you download, built into the core of Android 12, will allow users to get into gameplay in seconds while game assets are downloaded in the background,” Greg Hartrell, product management director of Google Play and Android, said in the blog post. “We are seeing games being ready to open at least two times faster and we are very excited about the improved user experience.” The new feature will make the core assets of larger mobile games download faster, so you can start playing the main parts of a game while it continues to download files in the background. Aside from the ability to access more games faster, Google also announced a new game dashboard. Google said the dashboard “provides an overlay experience with quick access to key utilities during gameplay—like screen capture, recording, and more.” Google also added that it is continuing to innovate its Play Assist Delivery, so players spend less time waiting for their games to download while keeping the quality of the game. Google said it would begin using Texture Compression Format Targeting to automatically figure out what compression formats to use to further reduce your game’s size. These new gaming features are currently in beta for developers, but Android smartphone owners can expect to see them once Android 12 debuts this fall. Other exciting Android 12 features include new themes and color schemes, better power efficiency, a new Privacy Dashboard, a unified API, and more.
