Is the Web Browser the Gaming Platform of the Future?

The gaming landscape has changed rather drastically in the past ten, or even five years, but what’s in store for the future? More now than ever, casual gaming is big business, and so is “accessible” gaming. Many people today own a smartphone where a game is only a button push away, which quite simply is something that defines “accessible”.

From the perspective of a gamer who thrives on advanced graphics, Web-based gaming hasn’t quite taken off… not even a little bit. There are dabbles of games like Quake Live out there, but nothing else quite so serious that even begins to ween people off of games that have to be installed. But, the potential is there, and you don’t need to look anywhere but at Facebook to see that Web-based gaming has some major potential.

So what about the big game developers like EA? What does it think? Well according to Trip Hawkins, EA’s founder, the facts are this. There are 2 billion browser-enabled PCs worldwide, and over the next couple of years, there’ll be a billion browser-based tablets. Add that onto mobile phones… and you can see where things are going. Game developers cannot ignore the potential here.

What I’m curious to know though, is what you guys think. Do you play any games in your browser today? Are you opposed to the idea? Personally, I don’t play a single game in a browser, but I am not exactly against it. My main concern is with regards to stability. Flash as an example is a technology that crashes on me all the time, so I have a hard time putting much trust in full-blown games.

Leave your thoughts in our thread below!

The explosion of browsers onto mobile devices and the rise of cloud-based gaming can take much of the credit for why Hawkins, who was also Apple’s director of marketing prior to founding EA, believes that it’ll end up the game industry’s most central platform.