Where are the sources saying that Adobe's moving away from flash?
If anything they've been amping up their efforts to keep flash alive by focusing on Air (Machinarium was the number one app in the app store, and it was created in flash) and allowing to port Unity games over.
Moblyng an html5 gaming company blew 7.5 million in one year. The regular casual web-gamer isn't going to play a game that's half-baked. It's just not a viable alternative to flash right now. And there's no amazing IDE, which definitely led to the growth and explosion of all these flash games / apps, that's out there for html5.
Part of the beauty of a closed environment is not having to worry about trying to convince other browsers what features to standardize. They can just march on and implement features they feel are most important. And they're doing a pretty damn good job.
Sorry for the rant, but it really irks me how the media has completely skewed the public's perception on the state of flash.
Flash is not Adobe's core business. It's just a result. Their business is to make and sell amazing Editors. CS is their main product. They bought Macromedia, just to own much of the market of Designer-oriented applications. And Macromedia filled a Gap.
But from now on, they are investing heavily in building tools for HTML5.
-You can see them building Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tools. [1] (this link is almost a year old, so I'd expect them to have something much more advanced by now).
- They are building HTML5 Editors [2]
- They stopped developing Flash Player mobile. [3] In the same post where they state that they will stop developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, they state: Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5.
Ok, ok, they also state that they will keep working in Flash for desktop. But it's like when any software company says: "We'll drop X, Y, Z so we can focus on A". That's something said to please their shareholders, so it doesn't sounds like "As our products are no longer needed, we'll just kill them".
Part of the beauty of a closed environment is not having to worry about trying to convince other browsers what features to standardize
Sure, but if you are a guest inside the browser, and the browser developer just throws you away, you have to move somewhere else. That happened with Apple, and it's happening again this year Microsoft. Windows 8 won't support flash running on Metro. Even more, they won't support ANY plugin.
Apple just wants to keep selling their Creative Suite. So, the best thing for them to do, is to focus on HTML5, because they now know that Flash is doomed sooner or later. And they are doing it. I expect to see in the near future something like Adobe Flash Professional but designed for HTML5.
I don't want to be rude, but I keep seeing people refusing to see this. People who won't accept the fact that Apple has realized they need to move on, and they are on their way to do so.
Sooner or later, flash will be to Adobe as VB6 is to Microsoft. Legacy code.
One more thing:
Imagine for a moment that you are Adobe. You have an amazing suite of products, and one few of them are based on Flash.
You realize that the browser developers have chosen to work and invest in something else. You go through all 5 stages of grief [4]. You deny it, you get angry, you bargain, you get depressed, but finally at least, you accept it. You HAVE to adapt and you have to work with them. But you won't have anything to sell for at least 1 or 2 years. And you still have this wonderful suite on the market.
What do you do? Do you go out and yell: DON'T BUY IT! WAIT UNTIL WE RELEASE OUR FUTURE-PROOF PRODUCT!!!
Of course not!!! You say We are already working on Flash Player 12 and a new round of exciting features which we expect to again advance what is possible for delivering high definition entertainment experiences
But at the same time, in the same paragraph you say: We will continue to leverage our experience with Flash to accelerate our work with the W3C and WebKit to bring similar capabilities to HTML5 as quickly as possible, just as we have done with CSS Shaders. And, we will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve so developers can confidently invest knowing their skills will continue to be leveraged.
Read it again: a smooth transition to HTML5.
TRANSITION.
That's their way to say: "Keep buying and using our products, while we develop our HTML5 editors. Then, you buy our new products and move to HTML5."
They have went through the last phase. They have accepted it. It's time for their community to do the same.
BTW, Google ported Quake II to the browser (WebGL, WebSockets, etc) back in 2010.
BLOG: http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2010/04/look-ma-no-plug... CODE: http://code.google.com/p/quake2-gwt-port/
Why don't we have something like a MMO-SimCity 4, instead of all those *Ville-s out there. Hey, EA, are you listening ? :)