The Latest from Google Play: Q4 2024

Hi everyone,

As 2025 gets underway, I’ve been reflecting on the incredible achievements and connections we made with our users and our global developer community, especially in the final months of 2024.

In October and November, our teams connected with top developers at Playtime events in Milan, São Paulo, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, and Shanghai. We shared exciting updates and best practices, while hearing directly from developers about their key challenges that will help us shape the future of our platform.

We also revealed our Best of 2024 awards in late November, celebrating incredible apps and games across phones, large screens, watches, and PCs. These awards recognize the creativity, innovation, and quality that make our developer community so special.

But that’s not all we accomplished together — read on for more highlights from the past quarter.

Helping users discover content they’ll love 

We launched new tools and features to connect people with their favorite apps and games while helping developers reach their ideal audiences.

Discovery enhancements: Helping people discover more of what they love

• New curated space for football: Curated spaces help users explore their passions all in one place. Our latest space in Brazil was dedicated to football (soccer in the US) for the final stages of the national championship in November. This temporary space allowed users in Brazil to enjoy new football-related content daily, including match highlights, promotions, and editorial articles, right on the Apps Home tab.

• Expanded personalized sports content: The Sports Moment card helps sports fans stay updated on regional events and discover recommended streaming apps. US fans can now use the card to find WNBA game information and streaming options.

• Trending searches: The top three trending Play searches now appear on the phone version of Search Home in the Play Store in the US with support for other devices and global users coming soon.

• Interest-based recommendations: New multi-select interest filters allow users to share what app categories they’re interested in to get more helpful recommendations. Earlier this year, we announced this for games, and now these filters are also available for non-gaming apps.

Editorial recommendations: Curated for diverse interests

From seasonal celebrations to major shopping events, our editorial content offers timely, relevant, and engaging recommendations for a wide range of interests. For Cyber Week, we curated deals from developers alongside our first-ever hardware promotion in Google Play, showcasing discounts on Pixel Watch and Pixel 9 Series devices. We also celebrated Diwali, the Festival of Lights, with Diwali Deal Days offering special promotions and engaging content to Play users in India. And for Halloween, we highlighted spooky apps, games and books plus a “Streams and screams” collection featuring content from our streaming apps.

Search results and store listing improvements: Helping users find content faster

• Enhanced content formats: To make developers’ videos more engaging, we improved how they’re displayed on the Play Store. Fullscreen portrait videos now immerse users and feature a prominent "Install" button.

• AI-powered FAQs: Earlier this year, we introduced AI-generated app FAQs to select English-language game detail pages post-install to help users dive into the action sooner. And now, we’ve expanded beyond games and rolled out this feature to select English-language app detail pages.

• Where to Watch: Our new content search capabilities help people easily find the relevant apps to watch their favorite movies and TV shows. This experience is currently available in the US with plans for expansion coming soon.

Android XR: Enabling developers to create immersive experiences

Android XR, our new platform for extended reality (XR) devices like headsets and glasses, offers developers an exciting opportunity to reach users in a completely new way. At the XR Unlocked event in New York, we unveiled developer tools and SDKs alongside partners Samsung, Qualcomm, and Unity.

To support these amazing experiences, our Play teams have built a dedicated publishing track for XR apps, enabled “Made for XR” app badging and XR-specific listing assets, and enhanced discovery in the store. This is just the beginning, with even more tools and resources coming later this year.

Making Play the best destination for games

For gamers, whether they prefer casual mobile games or immersive multiplayer role-playing games on PC, Play is there to help from discovery to gameplay and beyond. In Q4, we made some amazing progress:

Game progress on store listing pages: Boosting player engagement

For select games, gamers can now see a personalized summary of their game progress directly on the game's store listing page. They can see earned, unlocked, and in-progress achievements to stay motivated and jump back in to unlock more. Game developers can unlock this feature for their store listing by integrating Play Games Services achievements.

Google Play Points: New streaming entertainment perks for members

With over 220 million members, Google Play Points is one of the world’s largest rewards programs. Earlier this year, we expanded Play Points to include exclusive perks and VIP experiences at top events such as Comic-Con and Zedd in the Park. Recently, we collaborated with top streaming services to offer members even more.

• In October, we launched our first streaming entertainment perk. Gold, Platinum, and Diamond members in select markets can now claim extended free trials to Disney+ and Hulu.

• And, Gold+ members in 26 countries can get extended free trials to YouTube Premium.

Quests & stamp cards on Games Home: Enabling players to earn more rewards

With our new offers recommendation system, gamers can complete quests and fill their stamp cards by making purchases in the Now Cluster on Games Home.

Driving global growth with secure, frictionless payments for users

Google Play Commerce enables frictionless, secure purchases for users and unlocks international revenue growth for apps and games businesses.

Proactive payment setup: More ways to help people be ready to purchase

To make the purchase experience more effortless, we've been proactively encouraging people to set up payment methods in advance within Play.

• For example, users can now add recommended payment methods based on regional popularity directly from the Apps and Games Home, and right when they open Google Play.

• We’ve also been prompting payment setup and have enabled more regional payment options during Android device setup.

• These efforts doubled the number of users with payment methods set up in 2024, now over half a billion. In December 2024 alone, this led to a 3% increase in global conversion rates, meaning more people are completing purchases, which translates directly to higher revenue potential for app and game developers.

Purchase flow recommendations: Suggesting other relevant products

Our new algorithmic recommendation engine helps users discover relevant in-app purchases they’re likely to buy. Developers can select products to feature in Play Console, and we'll recommend a popular or related option at different moments in the purchase journey, helping users find what they need.

Subscriptions improvements: Enhanced tools for developers, enhanced value for users

We've also made more improvements to our subscriptions offerings. Developers now have more flexibility to customize payment recovery periods, helping reduce involuntary churn. Users also have new ways to save, including the ability to use Play Points vouchers to help reduce subscription costs.

Cart abandonment reminders: Helping re-engage users

Play can now gently remind users of abandoned purchases when they browse the Play Store, which can drive re-engagement and revenue. This feature is automatically enabled, but developers can easily opt out.

Boosting trust with safer, high-quality experiences

Google Play enables high-quality experiences for all users by prioritizing secure and seamless interactions, empowering developer tools, and robust platform protections.

Play Integrity API: New features to protect revenue and enhance user safety

The Play Integrity API helps developers safeguard their apps and users from attacks, abuse, and unauthorized access. Developers who use the Play Integrity features are preventing up to 80% unauthorized usage compared to unprotected apps. We recently launched new features to help developers further defend users against security threats:

• Hardware-backed security: Developers can now opt in to faster, more privacy-friendly integrity checks on all form factors running Android 13+.

• Security update check: Developers can also check if a device has had security updates in the past year, and use extra precaution for devices that historically are compromised.

• App access risk: This allows developers to detect and respond to apps that can capture the screen or control the device, protecting users from scams and malicious activity designed to trick them and steal their information.

• Automatic protection: Launched to all developers in Play Console, this feature helps reduce unknown redistribution and ensure more users receive their official Play updates, with no developer work needed.

Play Console updates: Making it easier and faster for developers to keep users safe

We’re enhancing Google Play Console to empower developers to build safer and more secure apps, through:

• Additional protections for minors: To maintain a safe and positive environment for young users across the Play Store, we launched the “Restrict Declared Minors” feature to help developers ensure that their apps reach the appropriate audience. When developers turn this feature on, it prevents known minors from downloading or purchasing the app, continuing subscriptions, or making new purchases if the app is already installed.

• Clearer policy issue details: To make it easier for developers to fix policy issues, we enhanced the Policy issue details page in Play Console with visuals, clear instructions, and direct links to fix the issue.

Testing requirements for new personal developer accounts: Updates in response to feedback

To help new developers build and launch high-quality apps, we introduced testing requirements in 2023. These requirements for publishing new apps to Google Play were intended to help developers to test their app, identify issues, get feedback, and ensure that everything is ready before they launch. Based on developer feedback, we've reduced the required number of testers from 20 to 12 for personal accounts. This change makes it easier for those starting with smaller audiences to publish their apps while still ensuring a positive experience for users.

Battery drain metric for watch faces: Improving Android wearable experiences

To improve Android wearable experiences, we launched a battery drain metric for watch faces in Android vitals in Play Console. This new metric helps developers track how their watch face designs impact battery life. Because watch faces are "always on," optimizing battery usage is critical for improving user experience. We also warn users if a watch face is draining too much battery.

Championing our global developer community

Our global developer community is the heart of Play. We're constantly seeking ways to celebrate their successes and provide the resources they need to accelerate their businesses.

Best of 2024 Winners: Celebrating the year’s most outstanding apps and games

Our Best of 2024 awards celebrated the talented developers and publishers who create amazing apps, games, and books for the Android ecosystem. Check out the full list of winners by region: India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the U.S.

Indie Games Fund: Supporting indie game studios in Latin America

The Indie Games Fund announced the ten indie games studios in Latin America that will receive a share of $2 million and hands-on support. This investment empowers studios to expand their teams, enhance their development skills, and reach a wider global audience on Google Play.

#WeArePlay: Shining a spotlight on the global developer community

In 2024, #WeArePlay shared over 300 stories from the people behind app and game companies. Our latest films showcase Fujio from Japan, whose app Pirika combats litter by mobilizing a global community to clean up public spaces, and Mesty and Garri from Indonesia who help parents across the country access expert medical advice with their app Tentang Anak.

Take a look at some of the other inspirational stories from this year below:

And that's a wrap on the Q4’24 edition of The Latest from Google Play!

In 2024, Google Play became more than a store, with better discoverability, new gaming options, bigger rewards, and more timely content to better connect people to experiences they’ll love. We continued sharing our vision for the future of Play with developers, powered by new tools and features to help us succeed together.

I’m excited to see this vibrant marketplace continue to grow in 2025, as our teams continue to listen to feedback from our users and developers and keep their needs at the center of everything we do. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements that we'll be sharing at the Game Developers Conference in March.

Looking forward to the year ahead together,

Sam Bright
VP & GM, Google Play + Developer Ecosystem