Popular game website vendor to build its mobile business on HTML5
The ongoing format war between Adobe and Apple has swayed social game studio Spil to build its games portal in Apple’s preferred HTML5 standard.
Spil says its gaming websites takes in some 130 million users per month, and claims its new mobile websites will be implemented in HTML5 and thus allow Apple’s iPhone and iPad to access them.
And as a further sign of intent, Spil is also launching a $50,000 contest for developers to make popular games in HTML5.
Most Android OSes and all of Apple’s iOSes will now be able to access Spil’s 47 game websites.
“Openness is at the core of everything we do, which is why HTML5 fits so well with our company mission to unite the world in play,” said Spil CEO Peter Driessen.
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“We are aware that HTML5 is still at an early stage, but already developers can use it to make beautiful games, and we are confident that the industry will quickly embrace it. Within three years, we expect HTML5 to be the standard in gaming devices.”
... as it is the first and only news under spil tag :D
I recently moved to Flash for online game development and found it a revelation compared to other web technologies. Compile it once and it runs the same on any browser. This was NOT the case with more traditional DHTML/Javascript/AJAX stuff, which could often involve testing and retesting to cater for the individual traits of various browsers. The issue has only became worse in recent times with the proliferation of alternative browsers (Chrome being the most recent one not to ignore) as well as the new wave of mobile browsers. Larger teams can of course employ people specifically to check and test the various editions of a browser, though even then it's quite demoralising when your latest bit of killer-code you spent days on doesn't quite work the same on Chrome or a Blackberry, for example. Right now, certain test animations in HTML5 are not working at all for me in HTML5, though they seem fine in Chrome. Ugh. Things will improve I'm sure, but I would hate to have to tackle a big project with HTML5.
I have weighed up the pros and cons of both HTML5 and Flash. For me, a one-man team, I am happy to lose any custom from iPhones or iPads for the greater power you can leverage from Flash. In any case, titles on the Appstore don't seem to be the goldmine that many make them out to be - not when the asking price for many games in the store is tragically low.
Despite all this, I think HTML5 remains a great addition to a web-developers toolkit.
I agree with the above comment, and plus now you can export as an air app, which is supported by iOS and Android, so you can distribute your webb app through the store..
