While the major mobile platforms seek to tie users into their content stores and experience, they face the inevitable rise of cross-platform offerings, driven by HTML5. This was clear in the mobile gaming world this year, with two big names, Zynga and Electronic Arts (EA), showing off multi-OS services.
At its Unleashed event, Facebook-based games provider Zynga unveiled a platform which it said would eliminate fragmentation for developers and users, by allowing customers to play its games across different OSs and portals. As well as Facebook itself, these include Android, iOS and Google+, as well as the web.
The focus on Google’s social network reinforces Zynga’s recent statements that it would reduce its reliance on Facebook. Such strategies are worrying for the social networking giant, which is already facing many challenges in generating revenue from its huge mobile presence ‘ Zynga accounted for 15% of its first quarter revenue. However, Facebook also hopes to enhance its mobile power and business model by making a hefty commitment to HTML5, in order to dilute the importance of the individual operating systems.
Zynga’s new multiplayer feature allows multiple gamers across different devices play with, or against, one another simultaneously. The firm also debuted a new application programming interface (API) to expand its collection by allowing third party developers to create games for Zynga.
Meanwhile, Electronic Arts signalled its future strategy by releasing Strike Force, an HTML5-based 3D multiplayer title enabling gamers to compete across smartphones, tablets, handheld consoles and other web-enabled devices. Chief creative director Richard Hilleman told The New York Times that development costs for HTML5 games are far lower than for console products of a similar quality.
“We’ve learned how to exploit parts of HTML5 that nobody foresaw,” he said, claiming that the cloud-based Strike Force is far more complex than most interactive games written in HTML5. The publisher has also developed HTML5 add-ons such as audio enhancements capable of generating more than 200 sounds.
For now, the game runs exclusively on Google’s Chrome browser and Android 4.0 but in future EA will pursue a multiplatform approach. It is shifting its business model away from premium mobile game sales to the freemium approach.