Apple Announces Xbox Live-esque Game Center For iPhone

All the iPhone gaming fanatics who've spent years wishing for a central gaming hub service of some sort for the device may finally get their wishes granted. At an event today where Apple unveiled the iPhone OS 4.0, the company announced a new service for the iPhone called Game Center.

Though full details have yet to be released, Game Center is described by Engadget as "like Xbox Live" but for iPhone games. This means the service will include leaderboards, an Achievement system, and matchmaking. Ars Technica's live blog also mentions the ability to "challenge your friends to games," suggesting that there will be a more traditional friends list of some sort, though whether it's pulled in from your regular phone contact list or accessed elsewhere is not yet clear.

Though this new feature already sounds exciting, there are still a lot of questions up in the air, including whether past or future iPhone games will be required to implement the service, whether or not it will be free, and when it will be available. For now, Apple's only saying later this year. We're eagerly awaiting more details and will update when we have them.