Glu CEO Niccolo de Masi has asserted that, while HTML5 gaming is on the rise, its slow progress means it won't be a viable alternative to native apps for most publishers for another five or ten years.

The admission was made during an interview discussing Glu's future plans, with de Masi stating HTML5 is currently the sole domain of "periodicals, magazines [and] newspaper-type applications."

Step one

"It's very early days for HTML5," said de Masi.

"A year or two beyond you'll start to see other simple apps like the Bloomberg financial apps, weather apps, that kind of stuff all makes sense for HTML5.

"Beyond that, another year or two down the line, you're going to have simple casual games that are going make sense to be programmed in HTML5."

De Masi said even then, it won't be advanced enough for Glu's games.

"Glu's approach is to play at the exact other side of the spectrum here," he added. "We build apps that require 100-200-300 megabyte downloadable clients. Things like 3D FPS.

"For our style of games, you're five years away if not 10 years away from being able to deliver a comparable bandwidth and hardware experience using an app model vs. an HTML5 model. We choose to partner and build a style of games that take advantage of the latest hardware."

Winning with Windows

Outside of specific languages, format wise de Masi said Microsoft's Windows Phone is showing much promise, and is likely to benefit from bolstered Glu support when Apollo – better known as Windows Phone 8 – launches.

"We had something like three of the first 10 games on Windows Phone 7 last year," he said, adding the company was "bullish on Windows Phone 8."

He concluded, "In the long term I find it hard to believe that the three largest technology companies in the world, Apple, Google and Microsoft, will not be very significant market share leaders in the smartphone and frankly the laptop, tablet, living room platform wars."

[source: FierceMobileConent]