Adobe reels in game coders with a quick free Flash
Then taxes apps that bank more than $50k
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
Adobe is allowing programmers to use "premium features" in Flash Player 11.2 for free to kickstart take up among games makers.
After unleashing the Flash build and AIR 3.2 upon the world, Adobe announced that premium functionality in Player will be available free of charge to content published before 1 August and there will be no charge for apps that rake in less than $50,000 in net revenue. Each application that makes more will be charged 9 per cent of its takings.
The premium features in question are Stage3D hardware acceleration with domain memory, which allow game engines for C++ apps to run across browsers without loss of quality. This feature was in earlier versions of Flash but is now also available for Android and iOS apps as of version 11.2.
Adobe senior product manager for gaming Tom Nguyen wrote here: “We’ve designed this pricing to encourage the creative experimentation that sparks great ideas and great games. This also allows us to invest in and support innovation in Flash technologies that benefit an ecosystem of game middleware and development tools, beyond Adobe’s own first party tools.”
Thanks to HTML5-loving Steve Jobs playing hardball with Flash on iPhones and iPads, Adobe was forced to reassess the future of Flash as a sprawling multimedia format and its place in an increasingly mobile world.
After Apple co-founder Jobs blocked the player that’s ubiquitous on PCs and even his Macs, Microsoft bought into HTML5 at the expense of its Flash alternative Silverlight and a whole industry is closely following developments in the mark-up spec.
The result is an outbreak of pragmatism at Adobe, with the Flash biz even saying that HTML5 is the best technology for enterprise applications "in the long term".
The Flex SDK, which lets programmers build applications for the Flash runtime using XML and ActionScript code, is being handed to the Apache Software Foundation. Adobe plans to continue supporting Flash on desktop browsers and will further develop its Flash-based AIR.
With the world now frowning on Flash, Adobe has repositioned its technology from mass-market media player to a development and runtime for gaming and video. You can see the Flash Player roadmap intended to support that shift here. ®
COMMENTS
Die Flash
Off to the archives with you along with Silverlight.
Re: errm so.
Oh yes it does, probably because it needs more memory for all the extra layers.
The game Machinarium is a good example. No justification apart from use of Flash for a game like that to only run on the iPad 2, it's not even 3D!
Even then it still crashes much more than other games.
Oh Please, not again.
Let's not start this. I know there is no easier way to start a flame war around here than defending Flash or criticizing Apple, but the Flash discussions tend to fill so quickly with bizarre claims that it really is just annoying. Flash on intel lives, on mobile, not so much. Beyond that, lets just wait and see.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
What you need to know about cloud backup
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
