Wii Games with HTML5 | Web Directions

• By: John
• Tweet: @johnallsopp
• June 14, 2013

For most of the history of what might loosely be termed computer games, dedicated consoles (and handheld gaming devices) ruled the roost. And none loomed larger on the landscape than Nintendo, with combined sales of hundreds of millions of units.

The dominance of this handful of device makers (essentially Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft) meant that developing games for wide distribution on these devices was expensive, and tightly controlled by the device manufacturers. And games generally cost $50, $100 or even more.

The success of smartphone and tablet platforms has impacted these traditional dedicated devices,and their entire ecosystem tremendously. Sales of consoles and gaming handhelds are down dramatically (down 27% in the US in 2012, year on year), as are sales of games (down 23% for the year in 2012).

In response, Nintendo recently announced the Nintendo Web Framework

a development environment based on WebKit technologies, supporting application development on the Wii U system using HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. It also supports the Wii U GamePad controller, Wii Remote controllers, and JavaScript extensions such as video playback. With the Nintendo Web Framework, development times will be reduced and Wii U applications can be easily developed using common Web technologies

We can only hope that games built with the framework will also be able to be run (legally and technically) on other platforms, at least within reason.

Regardless, developing games for this once exclusive platform promises to become a whole lot easier, and more democratic. And if you think games built with HTML5 aren’t a reality, the entire UI for SimCity is built with web technologies

the whole UI is done in javascript running a custom version of webkit. :D

— Maxis Scott (@MaxisScott) March 10, 2013

Want to try it out? Sadly, it’s still not available. But you can sign up to express your interest here.

More on games and the Wii U

The Wii U web browser’s HTML5 gaming capabilities from HTML5 Game Developers Lost Decade Games

People mentioned in this post

Scott Clarke (@maxisscott): Javascript/​UX developer for the SimCity UX team

Companies mentioned in this post

• Nintendo
• Microsoft
• Sony
• Lost Decade Games

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