Today, the online Flash games industry has taken a major step in reaching the mobile consumer with the launch of iSwifter. YouWeb, the technology incubator responsible for spinning out social gaming leader CrowdStar, mobile gaming powerhouse OpenFeint and trans-platform social game engine Sibblingz, is announcing iSwifter. iSwifter is a cloud-based Flash streaming service for mobile devices. With the application, consumers can enjoy popular casual and social games, streamed directly to their iPads. iSwifter plans to continuously update the service with performance and scalability enhancements and even support for 3G networks. iPhones, iTouch devices and, if the market demands, Android smartphones and tablets will be supported later this year as well.
Mobile Flash Gaming in the Cloud:
iSwifter, which is available for download today, allows users to browse, play and rate popular Flash games from some of the biggest Flash gaming portals on the Internet – all optimized for iPad. iSwifter uses an advanced cloud-computing platform to stream gaming content down to mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.
“iSwifter is tackling a big challenge in mobile gaming today,” says Michael Cai, Vice President of Research at Interpret, LLC. “That challenge is connecting the fragmented worlds of online Flash games with the mobile consumer in a scalable way.”
Other game-streaming platforms, like Onlive and Gaikai, have been focused on streaming console gaming for the desktop market.
“With a proliferation of devices like smartphones and tablets, and 4G network connectivity around the corner, mobile represents an increasingly attractive and high-growth distribution platform for gaming content”, says Peter Relan, founder of YouWeb.
“We are targeting the much larger user base of casual and social gamers who want to consume gaming content on-the-go”, says Rajat, creator of iSwifter, along with his co-founder, Rohan. “As more mobile devices hit the market, there is no reason why game developers should be locked out of the hottest handsets.”
Connecting the online games industry to iDevices:
The approach of streaming Flash-game content to iDevices addresses the concerns outlined by Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash open letter to the mobile industry. With iSwifter, Flash does not run on the iDevice at all, rather, it is streamed to the iDevice just like a Netflix movie or a YouTube video.
“iSwifter represents a game-changer for smaller Flash game developers that don’t have the resources to port their games to multiple mobile platforms like iOS and Android,” says Net Jacobsson, a former Facebook executive, advisor to King.com, and founder & CEO of Playhopper, a Flash-based social gaming start-up.
Over the past decade, the online Flash games industry has assembled hundreds of millions of engaged gamers who have, until now, had to wait for iOS versions of iPhone- or iPad-specific titles. Now, with iSwifter, Flash game developers and portals can instantly deliver thousands of titles directly on the iPad.
“Even for large developers like Crowdstar that have the resources to develop native versions of social games for mobile devices, streaming Flash games from the cloud using iSwifter is an exciting alternative,” says Niren Hiro, CEO of Crowdstar. “Bringing existing games to mobile platforms with no changes can be a huge time to market advantage.”
iSwifter is currently exploring partnerships with major online Flash game portals and developers. More details on the iSwifter platform including how developers can sign-up are available at http://iswifter.youwebinc.com
