Google’s ‘ultimate Goal’ Is For Android Games To Work Seamlessly Across Mobile, XR, And TV

C. Scott Brown / Android Authority

Late last year, Google unveiled its first brand-new operating system in 10 years: Android XR. Designed for mixed-reality headsets and glasses, Android XR will be available in new products sometime this year, headlined by the secretive “Project Moohan” headset, created in partnership with Samsung and Qualcomm.

We know for sure that Android XR will support the Google Play Store and thus the millions of apps and games you find there. The problem Google faces, though, is how to scale Android apps and games from two-dimensional mobile screens to the immersive three-dimensional world of Android XR.

I recently sat down with Sam Bright, the vice president and general manager of Google Play and the wider developer ecosystem at Google, who had a few things to say about this challenge — namely that he is aware of the problem and is gearing up to take it on.

“We are looking for ways to make it easier for a developer to build once and deploy everywhere,” Sam said. “That is the ultimate goal.”

Sam Bright, the lead at Google Play, knows that users want apps to work perfectly across all of Android’s various form factors.

Sam admits that this is easier said than done. Right now, the overwhelming majority of Android games and apps are designed for smartphones. A smaller selection is designed for both smartphones and tablets, an even tinier selection is designed just for tablets, and a minuscule number is designed for Android TV. Now, with the launch of Android XR, the difficulties of making Android apps work seamlessly across everything will be even more difficult.

“What you are seeing as a general direction of travel is that we’re trying to make it easier for users when they switch devices not to feel like they’re completely switching context or no longer having access to their content — that it’s somehow gated by a form factor,” Sam explained. “If you take a giant step back, you’ll see that our investments across the developer experience, how we scale Play into new form factors, and AI are all within that context because a user wants to have multiple devices, and those devices are better together in the process.”

Some of what Sam is talking about here has already taken shape. Google just recently announced that Android 16 will heavily focus on adaptive apps, which fixes the problem of some apps having black bars surrounding them when scaled up to larger displays. This has been a significant ongoing issue for foldable phones, in particular. Although it will not be mandatory for Android 16 apps to support adaptive sizing, it will be mandatory for Android 17, so that change is happening. This will also help with other types of screens, including those within XR devices.

Google is already making strides to make moving from one platform to another more seamless.

Obviously, AI is also a part of this conversation. Sam pointed out that AI tools are already making developers’ lives much easier, enabling them to write code once for Platform A and then port that with ease to Platforms B, C, and D.

Finally, the discovery of new apps — especially ones that work well on any given platform — is a top priority for Google. Sam talked about his excitement surrounding the futures of Curated Spaces and Collections, both of which are new-ish Google Play tools users can use to find new content or rediscover apps they’ve installed but haven’t used lately. Sam didn’t have any specifics to share quite yet, but he talked at length about how he and his team are putting a lot behind features like these and will likely have more to announce deeper into 2025.

We’ll see the fruits of this labor soon enough. Although we still don’t know when Project Moohan and other Android XR-powered devices will launch, we know they are coming this year. It is likely we’ll hear a lot more about that and the general developments within the Google Play ecosystem at Google I/O, which we’re expecting to happen in May as usual.

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