Signs Point To Google Getting Back Into Video Games

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Is Google going to get into video gaming? Sounds (admittedly) absurd, but a posting on a recent high-profile tech blog seems to support that fact. In addition to some recent Google hires and a job listing, the search giant has history with their aborted Lively project, and they’ve also recently bought LabPixies.

In 2008, Google experimented with “Lively by Google” a sort of 3D chat engine game, similar to Second Life, There and IMVU which ran on top of GTalk and was supposed to be embedded into websites and ran through a Firefox plugin. Confused? It never went anywhere, but it was Google’s first venture into anything close to video games.

Now, a recent post on TechCrunch blog is suggesting that Google may be looking to get back into the games business. They (Google) recently hired former game executive Mark DeLoura as a “developer advocate” to keep relations fresh between Google and game developers.

In addition to that hiring, a new Google job posting for a “Games Production Leader” showed up on the jobs.google.com website. But, don’t expect Google to making ultra-violent shooters for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Earlier this year, they bought LabPixies, an Israeli firm that makes games for the iPhone and social networking platforms like Facebook.

So, it’s being suggested that Google is going to set up a game publishing division (or possibly develop games themselves) to produce games for the “Google platforms”, which would include Android and Chrome (don’t forget that Android has been spotted on washing machines, other home appliances and is coming to TVs soon).

A few months ago, we covered a story here where iconic gaming analyst Michael Pachter said that Apple found itself as a power player in the video game industry because of the huge market of iPhone and iPad games. Google could be trying to take a similar approach here.

Do you think Google should get into the games business?