Leaderboards & Achievements Now Ready For Game Center

This week, Apple announced that iOS developers can begin to create metadata for Game Center leaderboards and achievements.

Game Center is Apple’s new social gaming initiative which will collectively track the progress of iOS game achievements. Similar to Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, Game Center achievements are rewards for players who accomplish a task such as finding hidden items in a game.

Apple indicates that the metadata must be entered through iTunes Connect where it is then tested in a closed environment to ensure compatibility.

Apple has not yet announced a release date for Game Center despite the service showing up in early iOS 4.0 builds. Game Center is expected to debut this Fall 2010 with the release of iOS 4.1.

[Apple]