At its Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple unveiled a new iOS Games App that Apple Senior Director of Marketplace Platforms and Technologies Ann Thai promoted as “a new destination to help you get more out of your games.”
The most relevant new social feature in the app comes in the “Play Together” tab, which provides a quick look at what your friends are playing on iOS. That tab will also integrate a new Challenges feature, which game developers can use to turn single-player games into score-based competitions between friends. These interpersonal Challenges come on top of the standard game leaderboards already common through iOS’s Game Center, allowing for a new way to compete socially.
Other than that, the new Games app seems to consolidate several features that were previously split between Game Center and the App Store. On the Home tab, the Games app will let you see games with new update, time-sensitive in-game events, and recommendations for new games to try. A Library tab will show every iOS game you’ve ever downloaded in a single place, while the Apple Arcade tab shows subscribers what’s available to download. The Games app will work in both portrait and landscape mode and be navigable via controller.