My Message close
GAME JOBS
Latest Jobs
spacer View All     Post a Job     RSS spacer
 
May 25, 2013
 
Treyarch / Activision
Technical Animator
 
Treyarch / Activision
Game Systems Designer
 
Infinity Ward / Activision
Senior Tools Engineer
 
Airtight Games
Environment Artist
 
App Minis LLC
Senior Unity Game Programmer
 
Gameloft
Game Designer
spacer
Blogs

  Xbox 360 Internet Explorer Plays HTML5 Games...But Not Flash
by Steve Fulton on 10/23/12 09:55:00 am   Expert Blogs   Featured Blogs
2 comments Share on Twitter Share on Facebook RSS
 
 
The following blog was, unless otherwise noted, independently written by a member of Gamasutra's game development community. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Gamasutra or its parent company.

Want to write your own blog post on Gamasutra? It's easy! Click here to get started. Your post could be featured on Gamasutra's home page, right alongside our award-winning articles and news stories.
 

This morning I work up early to download the new Xbox Live update for the Xbox 360 that includes Internet Explorer.  My goal was to try out some of our HTML5 Canvas game experiments to see is they work on the new I.E for the Xbox.  

To my surprise, they work fairly well.   Both 1945 Demo and Atari 2600 Match 3 work with the game pad (the mouse maps well to the analog stick) and include nearly all the sound FX (no mean feat for an HTML5 game).    

The main issues seem to be the is the size/scale of the games, and mapping the cursor to stay inside the game area. I spent no time trying to update the games to work inside the 360 I.E. browser, but I'm certain it will not take very long to optimize them for the platform.

Obviously, the games are just demos and need work, but you can see that there might be a bright future for browser-based games on the Xbox...at least in HTML5.   The Flash games I tried did not work, and it looks like the player cannot be installed.   So much for playing Home Computer Wars on the Xbox.  I guess I need to make a version in HTML5.

Atari 2600 Match  3 Demo

 1945 Demo

 
 
Comments

Roger Tober
profile image
That's good to know. For a lot of games, a gamepad is quite a bit more comfortable than a keyboard. I finally broke down and ordered one for my pc.

Derek Manning
profile image
Really stoked to see that HTML5 development can be done fairly easily for the 360. :D I am excited about the possibilities this opens up!


none
 
Comment:
 




 
UBM Tech