[casual_games] future of shockwave

[Jonas Beckeman]

Since 2001, Macromedia has only given basic life support to Director, and as
a result the installed plugin base seems to be declining steadily. From the
same site as I got the .NET install numbers, I count 47% SW installs on IE
browsers, so it's probably a little less over-all.

For a blatant example of the lack of interest from MM's side, look at the
Shockwave download page - it still describes the install process from a
pre-servicepack 2 perspective! Another is how meager the last product
updates, MX and MX04, have been.

I wouldn't recommend anyone to invest the time and money in learning
Director, unless they really need one of the features that are still
unavailable in other technology, such as decent 3D or custom native code
plugins.


Flash, on the other hand, is beginning to look like a very interesting
product. With the new compositing and scripting engines, the focus on a
professional IDE (Flex), and the pressure on Macromedia to fight XAML, it
may have a very bright future.

And I'd be surprised if they don't get 3D in there soon, since both Adobe
and Macromedia have previous experience with U3D technology.

Note that you can produce Flash files by coding with C# or VB.NET if you
don't like ActionScript:
http://www.xamlon.com/software/xamlonpro/flash/

There are also so many more 3rd party tools to choose from when it comes to
Flash, because of the (half-)open format. And the new external API sounds
exiting:
http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/flashexternalapi.asp

And of course, Flash skills are in much greater demand in the professional
marketplace.

HTH

/Jonas