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Amazon has just announced GameCircle, a new set of APIs for Kindle Fire game developers. GameCircle's offerings include an achievements feature, so you can keep track of the badges and awards you collect within a game, and a leaderboard system for competing against other gamers. But the most interesting GameCircle feature is a sync option that saves your current game to the cloud if you have to switch Kindle Fire devices or restore a deleted game.
It's an interesting and necessary play on Amazon's part--Apple provides many of the same features in its Game Center for iOS players, and it's another way Amazon can keep hold on its share of the tablet market, especially in the wake of Google's recently launched Nexus 7 tablet, which costs an identical $199. And if the rumors are true that an Amazon smartphone is on the way, it's easy to see why the company is making sure developers have the option to build seamless cross-device game experiences.
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