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Browsers — the Gaming Platform of the Future?

Posted by Soulskill on from the might-as-well-merge-our-nerd-holy-wars dept.

Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts, spoke at the recent Game Developers Conference about how he expects game platforms to evolve in the future. Hawkins thinks the role of web browsers as a platform will greatly increase as the explosion of mobile device adoption continues. "For all of the big media companies, this phase of disruption is dramatic and happening fast. Where it's really going to lead is where the function of the browser is going. ... The browser has taken over 2 billion PCs — it's going to be taking over a billion tablets over the next few years, billions of mobile devices. It will end up in my opinion very strong on the television. The browser is the platform of the future."

3 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Gaming platform? by Ant+P. · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not going to happen as long as the sound and input APIs completely suck.

    1. Re:Gaming platform? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      parent++;

      I'm currently using Java to hack a way to do mouse-look features (used in FPS games, where the mouse is positioned in the center of the screen, and used to look around).

      Sound is hijacked via Flash using SoundManager2.

      So sure... browser based games can work if you bring in Java and Flash. Wait, how is it an HTML5 game now?

      It's premature at this point, but I think we will eventually see browser based games explode once these issues are solved and modern browsers widely distributed.

  2. Re:Unlikely, but, whatever, everybody has an opini by TopSpin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    micro-games with abysmal graphics

    Webgl is real and works today in the latest browsers. Go here (with Chrome 9 or FF4 and a real GPU) to see it right now.

    developing for a web browser would [not] be more advantageous

    In terms of performance, browsers already provide an environment that has parity with the best stand-alone dynamic languages. Both HTML5 canvas and Webgl are sufficient to solve the rendering problem for a broad class of games. These tools are standards based and free. If you've ever earned a living making games you can't miss the potential.

    Large investments into browser development are coming from several competing organizations. Don't be surprised if browsers become superior to traditional techniques.

    --
    Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old