I’d feel bad for Adobe, but in college, I spent two weeks installing, patching, and otherwise desperately struggling to make Adobe Premiere work on about a dozen computers, so just the word “Adobe” fills me with a desire to find a torch and a pitchfork.
And I’m not alone, but most web developers hate Flash instead. And with reason. Flash is dangerous. Flash is buggy. And way too many restaurant websites use it.
So, it is with great relief that we report Adobe is killing Flash, namely by demanding with the latest update of Flash Player that anybody making “console-quality” games using Flash Player’s premium features give them, and this isn’t a typo, 9% of their revenue past $50,000. Adobe argues this will foster innovation, you know, because innovation in major companies happens when you start draining them of resources.
This is obviously aimed squarely at companies like Zynga and Facebook, currently making a mint off of free Flash games, but the actual effect will be HTML5 taking off like a rocket, because, let’s face it, nothing sells like “free”.
(Image courtesy Adobe)