There's a bit of irony in that the strengths of HTML5 shine through when confined to a single environment. If the best experience comes from targeting a single environment, then why go web at all? Further, HTML is considered a strong contender for true cross-platform app support, which is where it fails the hardest. In my experience, it's less effort to target native apps per platform than to try and use something like PhoneGap for apps of reasonable quality and complexity.<p>The single environment HTML5 showcase is also often supported by another development team who is actively trying to support their specific use cases; Microsoft with IE/WinJS, Mozilla with Firefox/WebOS, Sony with a PS4-optimized WebGL implementation, etc.<p>When the big players hit roadblocks during the development of something as high profile as their UI for their next-gen console, the browser can be changed on-the-fly to overcome them. That option isn't available to the rest of the world, and "audio doesn't work like we need it to" being a solvable problem can certainly influence whether or not you believe HTML5 is a suitable app platform.
So they have a web browser for the sole purpose of setting up an GLES context for their UI? On a video game console? I guess that's what you do when you suddenly have 8GB of RAM, you piss it away on useless shit...
Both steam and mac app stores are html as well. It really makes sense given how easy it is to create fluid layouts in browsers, as well as how much easier it is to prototype new changes from designers.
Most game companies and associated now use embedded Webkit that makes all this possible. Apple webkit investment still paying dividends and benefitted so many areas including desktop browsers (Chrome, now Opera) that run on it.<p>EA's open source initiatives almost all use an embedded webkit lib/browser to render UI content (some also use Scaleform (flash) -- skate 3 uses it a bunch).<p><a href="http://gpl.ea.com/" rel="nofollow">http://gpl.ea.com/</a><p>Back in the day EA did this more often, they also had an EASTL for game optimized STL containers/usage: <a href="http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n2271.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n227...</a>
Makes sense. HTML/CSS/JS is not a bad way to build UI and if you're going to have an HTML rendering engine and JS VM on your machine, you might as well use it.<p>When WebView on iOS and Android finally get WebGL support ( what's taking so slong?!!?), native app development with native SDKs will plummet.
Many commenters here may be very surprised to know that it is very common for game developers to use Flash/ActionScript to build both game interfaces and game logic. See ScaleForm.<p>WebGL is the natural next step.
I suspect it may be rendered in WebKit (<a href="http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/webkit.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/webkit.html</a>)
Its actually a pretty small part of the UX as the guy pointed out here:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/113371030751322342143/posts/5akNbY6A15J" rel="nofollow">https://plus.google.com/113371030751322342143/posts/5akNbY6A...</a>
More interesting is it is running FreeBSD:
<a href="http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/" rel="nofollow">http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/</a>
Hate it when people use UX as a cool new buzzword for UI. UX is not UI. Read:<p><a href="http://www.helloerik.com/ux-is-not-ui" rel="nofollow">http://www.helloerik.com/ux-is-not-ui</a>
I really enjoy getting to "peak behind the curtain" of embedded systems and other such appliances, especially games consoles. They've always held a certain mystique. Sometimes a beautiful, glossy UI running on top of a well thought out, logical and high performance system can be just as exciting as the games they were designed to deliver.<p>(At least to someone stuck doing LoB/ERP work and CMS development.)
WebGL is just an interface to low-level graphics. This just means HTML was inappropriate for any UX in PS4.<p>So, why didn't they use just native GL code? Because of sandboxing limitation?
yeah, Netflix thought it was a good idea too until they ditch their web ui for a native one:<p><a href="http://gigaom.com/2013/11/12/netflix-ditches-webkit-to-roll-out-slick-new-ui-for-smart-tvs-roku-boxes-and-game-consoles/" rel="nofollow">http://gigaom.com/2013/11/12/netflix-ditches-webkit-to-roll-...</a>