Game Center up to speed but quirks remain to be ironed out

With tens of millions of iDevices updating to iOS 4.1 and a large chunk of them experimenting with the new Game Center functionality - not to mention all the games being updated to support Game Center - perhaps it's no surprise that Apple's servers have been throwing up a few technical issues.

Adding friends within Game Center seems to be a bit problematic, partly because people are having problems verifying their email addresses.

As well as your main Apple ID email, you can add other email addresses so people can search for you within Game Center. However all your email addresses need to be verified by Apple i.e. it sends you an email that you have to open and click on the internal link to provide you have access to that address.

Verification has been tricky, with verification emails not being sent or going astray, as well as direct request emails to people known to be signed up for Game Center not yet making it through the ether.

At present, it seems that using people's Game Center usernames is the best method of linking up.

Less significant but more annoying in the short term, people have been having issues in terms of getting push notifications and sound alerts following the receipt of friend requests despite switching the option off.

//Update: Rebooting your iDevice may fix this issue.

However other issues such as the in-app link to view the list of supported Game Center going instead to Apple's website has been quickly upgraded with it now plumbed directly into the Game Center list in iTunes.

Aside from personal issues, developers have reported the occasional oddity too. One example is the game reMovem is displaying the leaderboards from Flight Control.

Still, after a slow start - I couldn't even get the iOS 4.1 update for four hours after its official release - Game Center seems to have gone live without any major problems.

No doubt, though, there will be plenty of small fixes for Apple and game developers to tweak over the coming days.