Adobe is about to taking mass market gaming up a notch. The company is introducing a number of high-end gaming features — from 3D graphics to easier mobile porting — today with the launch of version 11.2 of its Flash Player. The company is also launching a partnership with Unity Technologies, maker of the Unity 3D game engine.
This means that browser-based games and Facebook titles will be able to take a big leap forward in graphics fidelity, potentially offering a big boost for the whole game industry. Social and casual games on the web are expected to grow from $4.94 billion worldwide in 2011 to $8.64 billion in 2014, according to the Casual Games Association.
Adobe believes that it will continue to reach the largest mass market of game players with its Flash Player, which is already running on 1.3 billion PCs worldwide. That vast reach is Adobe’s biggest selling point: developers can create one version of a game and reach the most people. In the past, Flash games running on these PCs were two-dimensional and relatively primitive compared to console games with 3D graphics.
But the new Flash Player 11.2, which debuted in October and is now being enhanced, now has the option of tapping the 3D graphics hardware in a PC, not just the microprocessor. The player uses the Stage 3D applications programming interface that makes it possible to access 3D hardware. That API makes it possible for Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 to run inside Flash. It can also access fast memory features in a computer as well.
That enables Flash-based animations to take on a 3D look that is far better than the old Flash, which is the basis of most Facebook games today. Currently, nine of the top ten Flash games use Flash today.
“We consider Flash to be the game console for the web,” said Diana Helander, product marketing manager for gaming solutions at San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe, in an interview with VentureBeat.”We give game developers extraordinary reach.”
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