Google has updated Play Services to include support for Drive, turn-based multiplayer games and more ad networks.
In order to make their services accessible to users and developers without depending on carriers to upgrade the software, Google continues to push some of the functionality, usually provided as separate applications, into Play Services. This time they added a developer preview API for accessing an user’s Drive in order to read or write files. This API works in offline mode too, changes to a file being synchronized with Drive when the user reconnects. Drive API includes a couple of customized UI components developers can use: file picker and save dialog.
Another feature coming in 4.1 is support for turn-based multiplayer games. Developers can now create such games for 2 to 8 players, the Play game API doing the synchronization across all devices via Play Services.
Also, the location-based Google Mobile Ads SDK, introduced in Play Services 4.0, now fully supports several ad solutions that were partially supported in the beginning: DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and Search Ads for Mobile Apps.
Play Services 4.1 will be available for download after devices across the world have been updated to include it. Developers must wait a week or so before being able to download the SDK.