GameSalad adds HTML5 publishing tools
WebGL technology added to drag and drop game creation community
Game creation community GameSalad has announced the ability to publish games using HTML5, claiming that there are now 1 billion users able to access the content worldwide.
GameSalad's more than 170,000 developers are now able to use HTML5 to create new and enhanced versions of games, publishing on iOS, Mac and Web formats. The existing GameSalad Creator tool uses a drag and drop interface and requires no programming skills.
"By supporting HTML5, the next language of the web, GameSalad opens up a world of possibilities for aspiring and established game designers," said Steve Felter, CEO of GameSalad.
"We're giving people the ability to play and share GameSalad games within a web browser – dramatically expanding both the reach of our developers' games and their ability to create conversations and community around them."
Each game can also be embedded and played from other websites or shared on Facebook and Twitter. The technology, which includes use of WebGL, runs natively in browsers and does not require any plug-ins.
A number of HTML5 games are already being showcased at the GameSalad website, with high resolution WebGL versions of Zombie Drop and The Secret of Grisly Manor also available on Google's Chrome web store.
GameSalad claim that its existing technology has been used to create over 18,000 games, including more than 40 top 100 US games in the Apple App Store.
"The move to support HTML5 is smart," said Michael Pachter, research analyst at Wedbush Morgan. "It's a huge opportunity because HTML5's open standard can be used to make apps which run on any web-enabled device. GameSalad developers can create a game once for a variety of platforms. HTML5 could make GameSalad games pervasive."