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 ,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.
Mark Watson, chief executive of mobile internet specialists Volantis, suggested that the significance of SPIL’s move should not be underestimated.
“With one of the largest providers of mobile video – YouTube – and now one of the largest providers of mobile gaming on board, the endorsements for HTML5 are rolling in,” says Watson. “Judging the right moment to move with these trends is always difficult, but our own consumer research, which found that gaming is going to be one of the top drivers of mobile internet take-up in the next 24 months, suggests that SPIL are taking the initiative at the right time.“Crucially, SPIL’s decision to launch HTML5 versions of their sites shows that the barriers to running mobile games through mobile browsers which existed in the past are now well and truly broken. It is also becoming clear that Flash is only a stop-gap technology when it comes to online gaming – the adoption of HTML5 over Flash is part of a larger developer movement away from proprietary towards open technology.”
• 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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HTML5 version of YouTube launches for mobiles
The move will speed up access for people using the site via iPhones or Android
Mobile users in the UK, Europe and Middle East can now access an HTML5 version of Google’s YouTube video site, speeding up access for those accessing it via iPhones, Android or other mobile devices with browsers able to render HTML5 video content.
The launch comes as mobile use of the web is growing rapidly: Google says that YouTube’s mobile site, m.youtube.com, gets more than 100m video playbacks a day – roughly the number of daily views youtube.com was getting when being acquired by Google in 2006 – and every minute an hour of video is uploaded to the site from a mobile device. Mobile video playback also grew by 160% in 2009 on the previous year, along with an increase in adoption of devices able to stream video.
The US version of the HTML5 site for mobiles was launched last month.
Across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the UK consumes the most YouTube videos on mobile devices, followed by France, Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland.
The original mobile version of YouTube launched in 2007, but relied on versions of Adobe’s Flash for playback – which was too taxing for most devices. Since then, the development of the HTML5 web standard, and of mobile browsers – notably WebKit, used by Apple in the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, and by Google in Android – able to play back embedded video content using the H.264 codec, rather than Flash’s usual Sorensen or VP6 codecs, has meant that HTML5 video use has become feasible.
Google says the decision has been driven by the dramatic growth in mobile access to YouTube, which is more than doubling every year.
Several short-form video sites are building players in HTML5: Vimeo brought out a hybrid HTML5 version of its player earlier this month, designed for better mobile playback. But when US-only TV and movie streaming site Hulu unveiled a major revamp of its display earlier this year, it did so using Adobe Flash, saying HTML5 “doesn’t meet our customers’ needs”.
The use of HTML5 does not mean that Flash is shut out of YouTube’s mobile version: Adobe’s product can encode video in H.264 as well. But the growing use of desktop browsers such as Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari, which can render H.264 video – and with the forthcoming Internet Explorer 9 also offering it – poses a long-term question about Flash’s continued widespread use.
Brightcove, the video hosting service for many media organisations, began offering an HTML5 version of its site in March this year. The New York Times and Time Inc were among the first media outlets to integrate it – allowing playback on Apple’s popular mobile devices, which do not use Flash.
Closer to home, Erik Huggers, director of BBC future media & technology, recently defended the corporation from accusations that its widespread use of Flash – on the iPlayer, in particular – betrayed a commitment to open standards.
“Our use of Flash is not a case of BBC favouritism, rather it currently happens to be the most efficient way to deliver a high quality experience to the broadest possible audience,” Huggers said, adding: “The fact is that there’s still a lot of work to be done on HTML5 before we can integrate it fully into our products. As things stand I have concerns about HTML5′s ability to deliver on the vision of a single open browser standard which goes beyond the whole debate around video playback.”
Though the BBC does deliver H.264-encoded video to Apple mobile devices, it does not do that for Android devices, citing concerns about copying of content via the Android platform, and instead serves Flash-based video to them.
However YouTube has said that HTML5 is still some way from becoming the new standard for streaming long-form video content, such as BBC iPlayer content. “While HTML5′s video support enables us to bring most of the content and features of YouTube to computers and other devices that don’t support Flash Player, it does not yet meet all of our needs,” said John Hardin, software engineer at YouTube, in a blogpost published in June. “Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it.”
Microsoft has put its eggs in the HTML5 basket with next year’s release of its internet Explorer 9 browser. Ryan Gavin, Microsoft’s senior director of internet Explorer, said in May this year: “We’re all in on HTML5. We’ve been co-chairing the HTML5 working group, and we’re actually leading the HTML5 testing group.”
