Google Updates Android Market Client

Improved layout, with an intended focus on improving the discoverability of apps in the market. They’ve also increased the maximum size of an app from 25 MB to 50 MB. Rolling out to Android users over the next two weeks. Android Central posted a video showing the new Android Market app in action.

Even 50 MB is not enough for many games, though. So what Android game developers need to do, for games bigger than 50 MB, is create the game as a smaller-than-50-MB shell that, once launched, downloads the rest of the game data from the developer’s own server. This is one of many things that makes game development better on iOS. See these comments from Id Software’s John Carmack last month in an interview with Ars Technica. (Id’s Rage HD is a 1.4 GB download.)

★ Monday, 13 December 2010