Flash on (lots of) phones
Macromedia is blogging about their participation in 3GSM this week in Cannes… looks like the list of Flash-capable devices is on the verge of getting a lot longer.
Which is cool and all, but we’re still hoping for news of a Flash player on the PSP, DS, Tungsten or Treo.
Let’s play “Six Degrees of Flash Fantasizing”
- Sony already knows how: they had a version of Flash Player running on the (Palm OS 5-powered) Clié NX series. They have since quit selling Cliés in the US, but the high-end Sony-Ericsson phones do run Flash Lite. The PS2 also has some Flash skills. (I remember seeing this demonstrated at a Flashforward keynote.) Given Sony’s jack-of-all-trades optimism for the PSP, why not Flash?
- Other current Palm OS 5 devices like the Tungsten T3 / T5 and Treo 650 have better hardware specs than the NX, so they should be able to render Flash as well or better.
- Nintendo is rumored to be planning to incorporate Palm tools on the DS, so if there were already a Palm version of the Flash player, maybe it could come along for the ride.
Again, just wishful thinking here, but it could lead to some fantastic homebrew games & content development for those platforms, and the gaming devices in particular have strong-enough vector performance that Flash should be able to run at a tolerable speed. (Then again, dual G5s oughta perform relatively well too.)
To rephrase this post more selfishly: “Please put Flash on a device I [plan to] own, so I can build my own toys for said device without having to, you know, learn anything. Thank you.”
February 24th, 2005 at 3:37 pm
Keep dreaming… Anup Murarka, Senior Director, Macromedia tell me at MAX2004 that there are not enough Palm OS devices in the world to make it economical to do the development. MM likes to get $2 to $3 per device from hardware licensors. Since the mobile player needs to be developed specifically for each processor that it will work on, he indicated that the economic incentive is not there.
February 24th, 2005 at 4:41 pm
Interesting! And now that Sony has killed off the Clié, the one Palm licensee who did pony up is out of the picture…
March 6th, 2005 at 8:52 am
UncleNate : “The mobile player has to be developped for each processor”
This shouldn’t be a problem since the last palmone devices use the same arm processor as the PocketPc. I think there’s a bit of politics that lies behind this. Maybe some kind of exclusivity agreement between macromedia and microsoft.
December 22nd, 2005 at 12:00 am
I hope so, I’m typeing this on my PSP right now.
January 9th, 2006 at 8:30 am
flash on psp, NOW!
this would be so unbelievably cool, and i would surely make a psp dedicated flash site…
YO SONY: flash, make it happen.
January 13th, 2006 at 12:58 am
flash on psp would be perfect and how about a keyboard too it could use the mini usb port or the remote port
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:19 am
flashplayer and a keyboard sound like great ideas, a psp version of the ipod’s “itrip” would also be something good for long drives
February 23rd, 2006 at 8:58 am
Check it out: a new rumor has surfaced…
http://blog.flashforwardconference.com/2006/02/22/rumor-flash-lite-on-psp-and-ps3/
August 24th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
psp already has flash player, duh! i have over 100 games on it.