Apple’s new iCloud service may hold the key to one long-standing problem of iOS - synchronization of saved game files between devices. Other enhancements coming to iOS 5 will spill over to benefit gamers.
If you use an iPhone and an iPad, for example, you can install the same game on either device, but there’s no easy to way share game files between them. So if you get to level 30 on Angry Birds on your iPhone and fire it up for the first time on your iPad, you’ll find yourself back to level 1 on that device. It’s frustrating.
iCloud will enable applications to back up their settings files and documents to the cloud, and thus synchronize to each iOS device. Apple didn’t specify during the WWDC keynote (or in the information published on its Web site) if this technology could apply to saved games, but it is providing access to those Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to developers, which opens that door for iCloud to complies.