(Image Credit: Gameloft)
Based in Google’s home city of Mountain View, the Weeby team hope to be as disruptive to mobile game development as Google has been for the web. In fact, both Weeby and Google have something in common – a love for the cloud.
Weeby is building the first complete mobile game development suite based in the cloud. The current suite consists of a cloud-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) along with seamless integration with servers and social networks through Weeby’s game-loop engine, along with integrated engines for physics and visualisation.
The company says to think about the Weeby IDE “as a XCode and Android Studio replacement with a better approach that blends HTML5 and native mobile technology.”
Developers can build their games using standard tools such as Unity, Coco2D-X, or DebKit, and deploy across most platforms including iPad, Android, iPhone, laptop, desktop, or even TV. Weeby achieves this by allowing games to be deployed in HTML5, which the company believes can now offer the same performance and capabilities that used to be restricted to native apps.
Another benefit to deploying in HTML5 is that it can bypass Apple’s tedious app checking process which often causes a significant – and often costly – period of time from building your game to getting it live on the App Store for users to download.
Weeby and Google have something in common – a love for the cloud.
There is also the option to build created games as native apps, if the developer choses. Another option is to allow Weeby to host your game on their Amazon Web Services’ Simple Storage Service account for zero cost, and send a hyperlink to where the game is being hosted.
Beyond helping developers with the process of game development, Weeby has aspirations to become a game publisher to help navigate the difficult waters of getting your title noticed. The company hopes to achieve this by working alongside the ‘alternative’ stores based inside web browsers, or embedded inside apps like WeChat.
Rather than ending up with a flooded store like the App Store or Play Store which can affect discovery for even the best games, Weeby aims to ensure just “premium” content is published on their partner apps stores. This could be difficult to achieve and hard to distinguish what deserves to be classed as “premium” content – which might lead to some annoyed developers.
Weeby has grand ambitions, but whether it can take on the likes of Apple and Google at their own game in some regards will have to be seen over time. Right now it looks as if the company is offering a cloud-based game development suite at least worth checking-out.
Do you think Weeby’s approach to game development is a good idea? Let us know in the comments.
