Zynga Bets on HTML5 With Dextrose Acquisition
Zynga has announced its latest acquisition today, the German company Dextrose AG, which released a development platform called the Aves Engine earlier this year.
The news hasn’t been widely commented on yet, but this could turn out to be one of Zynga’s most important acqusitions. Aves is an HTML5 engine designed for high-end 2D and 2.5D graphics.
Since it’s in HTML5, Aves can run on both the web and on mobile devices browsers, like the iPhone’s Safari. More than just a potential tweak to Zynga’s Facebook games, the Dextrose buyout means Zynga could potentially develop a new game simultaneously for both web and mobile.
With FarmVille and its other apps on the iPhone, Zynga hasn’t done spectacularly well, but that’s probably in part due to the higher graphics expectations of mobile users. The Aves Engine hasn’t been widely used, so we’re not sure of its full capabilities. But Zynga probably wouldn’t have bought the company if it weren’t impressed by Aves’ graphical capabilities.
Here’s a video of Aves released by Dextrose for an April conference, and a more recent one from E3 2010 below it:
Like Zynga’s past acquisitions, Dextrose will take on a new name, Zynga Germany. Co-founders Paul Bakaus and Rocco Di Leo will become chief technology officer of Zynga Germany and country manager, respectively.
the article features the very first video of the Dextrose Aves Engine. There is a better one released during E3 2010 over at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmtQOB_KFzU
Thanks Jack, adding that video in too.
I am really interested in Aves engine and It seems to be an awesome framework.
Zynga did the acquisition of Aves engine framework. It was clever business decision.
This acquisition makes me worried for my project. Because I don’t know if Zynga will share the framework such as Dextrose planned.
On german news sites it’s pretty much stated that the Aves Engine as a product disappears. So Zynga get everything exklusively i suppose.
Thanks Christoph, but bad news…
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It is interesting timing, since Paul Bakaus is giving a lecture at Austin GDC next week to discuss the development of an opensource HTML5/Java Script game engine. Of course Zynga will be there, I sure hope this doesn’t mean he will “water down” his lecture, as it is about the only reason I am heading that way this year
Don’t worry, there are a number of other projects out there doing the same thing and becoming quite mature. I am working on an engine called Isogenic and there is also a competing engine being developed called Rocket.
My engine is isometric, using html 5 and canvas, written entirely in javascript and can handle huge map sizes with millions of tiles and objects.
Not sure about rocket engines capabilities but you can find videos for both engines on youtube.
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Im still on the fence with HTML5. Truth is.. there has always been games made in Javascript for years. HTML5 isn’t much different and if you look at the progression graph betwen HTML5 and Flash. Flash definitely has been many many times more progressive.
Besides, in a year or 2 when their game launches, I would be that most mobile devices will be fully flash supported anyway.
bart,
If you would have any knowledge of javascript, html or flash you would know what this was about. Pick up a book, or just Google a bit instead of wrighting a stupid post, that isn’t even remotely true.
in 5 years, Apple won’t accept users to play flash content.
and no one can say that html 5 is either a good or a bad thing. It’s loong until It’s finished.
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