Kongregate Arcade back in Android Marketplace, with some minor changes
Exactly one week after Kongregate's promising mobile app, Kongregate Arcade, made its tumultuous debut on the Android Marketplace (from which it was pulled from the very same day!) the browser-based gaming platform is ready for round two with Google, and has resubmitted the app. "We were just shocked," CEO Jim Greer told Joystiq after his app had been removed, an unusual move for the traditionally hands-off Google.
In preparing the app for resubmission, Greer and company made some subtle, but potentially crucial, changes to the app. First: Though the original app played games in a standard WebKit browser, Kongregate Arcade obfuscated that experience by hiding the browser's address bar. Now, the address bar is visible when the app first loads, and then it jumps to full-screen, "which is a standard feature of Flash," Greer reminds us (and Google, we imagine). Second: Kongregate Arcade will now use the standard browser cache to store its "offline" files instead of "explicitly downloading and managing games on the SD card."
Greer hopes that these changes help Kongregate Arcade "meet Google's requirement that we're not creating a competing App Store while still creating a great gaming experience." The new app is live in the Android Marketplace now, so we'll just have to wait and see if Google has any concerns this time around. If you want to sideload the original Arcade app, it's still available from Kongregate's site, though Greer tells us, "We'll work with Google to determine if we should stop supporting that version." You can find a video demo of the app (and its new changes) after the break. If you're an Android user, snag it and let us know what you think.
