Download iOS 4.1 now, get Game Center (on your compatible iProduct)
"Boom!" as one Mr. Steve Jobs might say. Just as promised, iOS 4.1 is available for download through iTunes and, with it, we have Apple's Game Center, the company's first foray into a more connected gaming experience. As seen on the slide above, Game Center offers multiplayer games, matchmaking, leaderboards, and new ways of discovering games. Of course, while iOS 4.1 will run on all sorts of iProducts, Game Center only works on post-3G iPhones and iPod Touches.
With Xbox Live coming to Windows Phone 7 in just a couple months, and rumors of PlayStation integration on the Android platform, things are about to get wild on the mobile gaming front. If you're the early adoption type, fire up iTunes and get downloading. If you're the wait-and-see type, maybe the early adopters will share their progress in the comments. We'll go first: Update complete, everything's working fine.
[Update: Things are still pretty spartan on the Game Center front. The service is up and running, but with just one game out that supports it – that would be the less-than-stellar iPhone port of Ms. Pac-Man – we're holding out for something better. C'mon Angry Birds! Quick feedback: You can't see your friends' friends, and you can't see their achievements either. We're assuming that changes if you each have the same game but, again, there's not a lot of software available right now. Anyone want to play some Fruit Ninja with OpenFeint?]
[Update 2: Touch Arcade is keeping track of the Game Center launch titles, and which ones have been updated, here. To put it more directly, that's the page you're going to want to sit on until Plunderland gets a "NOW LIVE!" note next to it.]
