HTML5 jumps into mobile gaming with SPIL Games
One of the world’s largest casual gaming companies today unveiled HTML5 versions of 47 of its games websites, proclaiming that it will be the new standard for gaming devices within three years.
SPIL Games has thrown its considerable weight behind HTML5 and the upward trend in casual gaming, with users now able to play its games on mobile browsers supporting HTML5 (ruling out devices running Android pre-2.0).
Previously, mobile visitors would have been taken to the full browser window displayed in Flash – but that would be slow to render with most phone browsers, and incompatible with Apple devices.
But close to a million mobile users try accessing a SPIL gaming website every month, a company spokesman tells us. More than half (52%) of these visits are from Apple devices, 15% from Android, 15% from Symbian (ie Nokia and/or Sony Ericcson) and 6% from BlackBerry devices.
The company, which currently has more than 4,000 games in its portfolio, is offering developers prizes totalling up to $50,000 (£41,000) for the best HTML5 game, encouraging the potential it says is “hampered by different protocols, operating systems, and platform-approval processes within the mobile world”.
An aside: Nick Jones, Gartner analyst, has an interesting take on that very subject:
“Native platforms will certainly become less important relative to the web platform because HTML5 supports a wider range of applications than the last-generation web.“But native platforms can stay ahead by evolving faster than HTML5, and in different directions to HTML5, it’s not hard to outrun a snail driven by a committee. So although HTML5 will be important the native platform will retain a big edge if you want to develop clever apps. And the native platform owners want it to stay that way.”
“Openness is at the core of everything we do,” says Peter Driesson, chief executive of the Netherlands-based company.
“We are aware that HTML5 is still at an early stage, but already developers can use it to make great 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.”
Analysts at Forrester predict the Western European mobile gaming market to grow from €746m (£616m) at the end of 2010 to €1.46bn (£1.2bn) by the end of 2015, due to the growth in paying mobile gamers (31 million to 45 million over the same time frame, Forrester predicts) and a growth in smarphone adoption.
• Another noteworthy HTML5 development: Ephemeral rockers Arcade Fire have teamed up with Google Chrome to put together a personalised music video. Nice.
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