Google Plus 5% Games Commission Is ‘Promotional’

What’s the difference between 30 percent and 5 percent? The obvious answer is 25 percent, but Google hopes the answer is more developers working on games for Google Plus.

The cheaper commission for Google Plus game developers was revealed by the venture’s Vice President of Product Bradley Horowitz and Games Product Manager Punit Soni during a video interview with VentureBeat.
Soni told VentureBeat that while Google Plus is charging a five percent commission to game developers, compared with 30 percent for Facebook, the five percent figure is “promotional,” and it has not yet been decided what the permanent number will be.

Google Plus currently offers 16 games (15 based on Adobe Flash and one on HTML5) from 10 developers and the games are free of charge for users, who can also opt to pay for virtual goods.
Ads have not yet been incorporated into the games.

Also from a user standpoint, Soni pointed out that the game stream is only visible to Google Plus users who express interest in gaming. He added that while Facebook has eliminated much of its game-related messages, they still exist.

Horowitz chimed in that while Google is not the “world’s expert in games,” they are a critical part of a social network, and Google Plus features such as Hangout can offer unique features to developers.

He added, “We have grown very quickly. I’m very confident that, given the growth trajectory we are on, we can get to meaningful levels of audience very quickly. We are also not in a race here. This is not only about acquiring users, but about creating a great and enduring user experience.”

Readers: Will you give the game stream on Google Plus a shot?