Google’s gaming ambitions took another step forward. The search giant Android team is attending the 2014 Game Developers Conference, where it announced a new version of Google Play Games Services that enables cross-platform multiplayer support for iOS and Android.

Google’s Play Game is already connected to iOS through Unity game engine plugin which is capable of sharing achievements and leaderboards and soon will also be updated to get multiplayer real time gaming support. After which, long desired cross-platform multiplayer real time gaming between two biggest ecosystems, Android and iOS devices will be possible. The added support will allow for turn-based and real-time multiplayer games between Android and iOS.

As part of the effort, Google is introducing a Play Games C++ software development kit that will support player data. Its Unity plugin is being updated to support the new cross-platform features. Google says the new SDK should help with cross-platform game development.

“To further help with cross platform game development, we’re updating our Play Games Unity Plug-in to support cross-platform multiplayer services, and introducing an early Play Games C++ SDK to support achievements and leaderboards,” said Greg Hartrell, Google Play Games team, in the Android developer blog post.

“In addition, we’re launching enhanced Play Games statistics on the Google Play Developer Console, providing easy game analytics for Play Games adopters. Developers will gain a daily dashboard that visualizes player and engagement statistics for signed in users, including daily active users, retention analysis and achievement, and leaderboard performance.”

The cross platform support will enable developers to easily set up achievements, leaderboards, multiplayer and cloud saves using Google’s cloud infrastructure and development APIs. Google Play Game Services first arrived back in the summer of last year, and although it is still very much a work in progress. The new plug-in support for iOS indicates that Google wants this service to span the entire mobile gaming spectrum.

Google is also making Google Analytics available directly in the AdMob interface, so developers can gain deeper insights into how users are interacting with their app. Google says advertising continues to be a core vehicle driving many game developers’ success, so it is bringing new ways to optimize ads to earn the most revenue. Google is also adding 18 new game categories in an effort to make game discovery a little easier.

The Play Services allow players to connect the different parts of the world, in order to offer them new challenges. There are regional or global rankings, you can save games in the cloud so that they can take it up with any device with an internet connection and so on. Users can invite friends to multiplayer games more freely and be able to send game gifts, which are small gifts that can be used in video games.

Google’s new initiative is aiming at attracting iOS developers to Android platform. Many games that support Google’s services on Android don’t do so on iOS, instead developers opt for Apple’s own Game Center and iCloud services. Furthermore, Google doesn’t offer any way to find iOS games that support the company’s services. To attract more developers, Google is adding more features including C++ tools to support achievements and leaderboards, and enhanced statistics in the Google Play Developer console.