HTML5 is not going to change the world for gaming. It's great for in-browser games now, but mobile has "changed the game" so to speak. The visibility you get by having a great mobile game in the app stores is huge for finding users and making money.
If I were writing a game today, I'd do it on mobile first and work backwards to desktop from there, not the other way around. There are plenty of great tools for that - cocos2d, corona, etc..
That being said, in a future where supporting multiple platforms is a must, HTML5 might be great place to start, even for mobile, but it's still very early and immature at the moment. Great for demos and proof of concepts for cheap, I don't know that I'd bet the farm on it yet.
I don't follow game development much -- I thought one of the reasons HTML5 was so widely touted was because it streamlined mobile game development -- instead of writing an Android and an iOS version of a game, you could write it in HTML5?
I'm surely I'm vastly oversimplifying the issue -- what am I missing?
Regarding controls: with the dual analog sticks, did you then have arrow keys/mouse bound to the sticks for non-mobile browsers, and then touch for mobile browsers? How was that handled?
I just switched between these two control schemes, based on whether the browser supported the touch events.
There's a certain degree to which you could do this "automagically" - i.e. generate on-screen buttons based on the keyboard keys that are used in the game. But since controls are so important, I'd rather decide for myself on case by case basis how they translate to mobile.
If I were writing a game today, I'd do it on mobile first and work backwards to desktop from there, not the other way around. There are plenty of great tools for that - cocos2d, corona, etc..
That being said, in a future where supporting multiple platforms is a must, HTML5 might be great place to start, even for mobile, but it's still very early and immature at the moment. Great for demos and proof of concepts for cheap, I don't know that I'd bet the farm on it yet.