iSwifter Brings Flash Gaming to iPad

Fancy Pants Adventures, one of the best Flash games out there.

There’s little doubt that Apple’s iOS-based devices have done a lot for the mobile computing industry. Their ease of use has attracted many new users to smartphones and tablet devices. Users who wouldn’t have considered these devices normally. But there’s been one thing that owners of rival devices have held up as a big failing of iOS: Flash support. Or rather, lack thereof.

For gamers, this is quite a big issue. There are many excellent games out there on the web in Flash format. And users of iPhones, iPod touches and iPads find themselves unable to play them. They have to wait for the developers to produce an iOS-native version and release it on the App Store. And thus, a formerly-free web game becomes a paid-for app.

YouWeb, the company behind cross-platform gaming network OpenFeint, are hoping to change that. Their new product iSwifter aims to provide a cloud-based streaming service to mobile devices. In effect, it’s be an OnLive-like service, but for Flash games rather than retail titles.

One of the big barriers with mobile Flash gaming has been the inconsistency between handsets. The iPhone, for example, doesn’t have any buttons. Some Android phones do. So how can controls which usually require a keyboard and/or mouse work?

Some Flash games, like polished RPG Sonny, are surprisingly sophisticated.

“iSwifter is tackling a big challenge in mobile gaming today,” says Michael Cai, VP of Research at market research firm Interpret LLC. “That challenge is connecting the fragmented worlds of online Flash games with the mobile consumer in a scalable way.”

iSwifter promises to allow users to browse, rate and play popular Flash games from “some of the biggest Flash gaming portals on the Internet”. Currently, the service supports content from Yahoo! Games, AOL Games, Facebook, Kongregate and “others”. They promise that these games will be optimized for iPad in some way. Perhaps this means that a certain amount of the iPad’s generous screen size will be devoted to virtual controls. Difficult to say, as the selection of games is currently quite limited. 

This sounds like a pretty good idea. It’s unlikely gamers will ever have to pay a subscription to play these games. Nor will they have to pay per game. This means the ownership concerns surrounding services like OnLive are cast aside. If the only monetary outlay required is the cost of the app itself (which is currently free), then gamers will be able to play all they want without fear. Many are hesitant to put their trust in services such as OnLive and Gaikai because they are unproven. If someone ploughs a considerable amount of money into a service and it then folds, what then? Look at what happened to early adopters of Realtime Worlds’ doomed MMO APB this week.

But with this service, gamers will be able to play Flash games on their mobile devices to their heart’s content. And thus workplace productivity just took another turn for the worse.

iSwifter is available now for iPad with a limited selection of games. iPhone, iPod touch and “if the market demands”, Android devices will be supported later in the year. Hopefully the service will prove successful and see regular content updates from its partners.