Wii; £24.99; cert 3+; Ubisoft

If we're being honest, you probably already know if Dance on Broadway is for you. When you went to open this review you were almost certainly looking for one of two things: justification for a purchase already decided on (or perhaps already made), or justification for your disdain.

Last November Ubisoft released Just Dance to underwhelming reviews but some of the best sales figures ever achieved by a third-party publisher for the Wii. With Just Dance 2 pencilled in for an October release, Dance on Broadway is a straightforward gap-filler – a quick and easy title certain to generate some revenue while also helping build anticipation for the main event.

The gameplay is almost identical to Just Dance, with players mimicking the actions of on-screen dancers, while holding a Wiimote. Just as with the former title, this feels entirely inadequate. Good dancing requires the whole body to move in unison, yet the nature of the hardware means that Dance on Broadway can only ever judge your performance on the basis of one limb. Even this is not done well.

At one point early on, while getting to grips with the concept, I found myself standing perfectly still, yet repeatedly being scored "great" for movements I hadn't even made. Knowing this, it was hard to shake the feeling that all subsequent successes or failures were rather arbitrary and at times it felt as though accidental motions were just as likely to be rewarded as intended ones.

From a presentation standpoint the game looks fine, if hardly inspiring, though the silhouetted images that appear along the bottom of the screen to warn you what moves are coming up can be more confusing than helpful. In terms of depth, the game offers little – with 20 show tunes to choose from but no career mode and nothing to unlock.

Yet this game will appeal to fans of Just Dance, of show tunes, and of games that provide an excuse to get up and throw yourself around your front room. Lyrics are displayed during the songs to allow players to sing along and as a party game it will provide plenty of cheap giggles. Some people will love it. And they knew they would from the moment they saw the title.

Rating: 2/5

One of the world's largest casual gaming companies today unveiled HTML5 versions of 47 of its games websites, proclaiming that it will be the new standard for gaming devices within three years.

SPIL Games has thrown its considerable weight behind HTML5 and the upward trend in casual gaming, with users now able to play its games on mobile browsers supporting HTML5 (ruling out devices running Android pre-2.0).

Previously, mobile visitors would have been taken to the full browser window displayed in Flash – but that would be slow to render with most phone browsers, and incompatible with Apple devices.

But close to a million mobile users try accessing a SPIL gaming website every month, a company spokesman tells us. More than half (52%) of these visits are from Apple devices, 15% from Android, 15% from Symbian (ie Nokia and/or Sony Ericcson) and 6% from BlackBerry devices.

The company, which currently has more than 4,000 games in its portfolio, is offering developers prizes totalling up to $50,000 (£41,000) for the best HTML5 game, encouraging the potential it says is "hampered by different protocols, operating systems, and platform-approval processes within the mobile world".

An aside: Nick Jones, Gartner analyst, has an interesting take on that very subject:

"Native platforms will certainly become less important relative to the web platform because HTML5 supports a wider range of applications than the last-generation web.

"But native platforms can stay ahead by evolving faster than HTML5, and in different directions to HTML5, it's not hard to outrun a snail driven by a committee. So although HTML5 will be important the native platform will retain a big edge if you want to develop clever apps. And the native platform owners want it to stay that way."

"Openness is at the core of everything we do," says Peter Driesson, chief executive of the Netherlands-based company.

"We are aware that HTML5 is still at an early stage, but already developers can use it to make great games, and we are confident that the industry will quickly embrace it. Within three years we expect HTML5 to be the standard in gaming devices."

Analysts at Forrester predict the Western European mobile gaming market to grow from €746m (£616m) at the end of 2010 to €1.46bn (£1.2bn) by the end of 2015, due to the growth in paying mobile gamers (31 million to 45 million over the same time frame, Forrester predicts) and a growth in smarphone adoption.

Mark Watson, chief executive of mobile internet specialists Volantis, suggested that the significance of SPIL's move should not be underestimated.

"With one of the largest providers of mobile video – YouTube – and now one of the largest providers of mobile gaming on board, the endorsements for HTML5 are rolling in," says Watson. "Judging the right moment to move with these trends is always difficult, but our own consumer research, which found that gaming is going to be one of the top drivers of mobile internet take-up in the next 24 months, suggests that SPIL are taking the initiative at the right time.

"Crucially, SPIL's decision to launch HTML5 versions of their sites shows that the barriers to running mobile games through mobile browsers which existed in the past are now well and truly broken. It is also becoming clear that Flash is only a stop-gap technology when it comes to online gaming – the adoption of HTML5 over Flash is part of a larger developer movement away from proprietary towards open technology."

• Another noteworthy HTML5 development: Ephemeral rockers Arcade Fire have teamed up with Google Chrome to put together a personalised music video. Nice.

Japanese publication The Nikkei has reported Capcom's going to enter the Facebook gaming arena, treading on FarmVille's turf with titles like Street Fighter and Resident Evil. It's not 100% confirmed, but the games are expected to be free. [CrunchGear] More »

The first tease of Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7 piqued my interest, sure. But after I had a little hands-on time with some of the games planned for launch, Microsoft's officially got my undivided attention. More »

We're sorry, but the Palm Pixi's rendition of Need for Speed no longer impresses us -- we've just seen John Carmack show off Rage for iPhone. While of course it looks nothing like the PC graphical monstrosity that swept the E3 Games Critics Awards, it's safe to say the 60 frame-per-second tech demo at QuakeCon 2010 shoves the cell phone gaming envelope through a Juggernaut-class brick wall. Where Carmack originally called the iPhone "more powerful than a Nintendo DS and PSP combined," the id Software co-founder is now aiming squarely at the likes of PS2 and Xbox with iPhone 4 hardware. Not impressive enough? He says it still "runs great on an original 2G iPhone" as well. VG247, who liveblogged the event, reports the title will be available in the App Store later this year for a relatively inexpensive price, with a second game available in time for the PC game's 2011 launch. Sadly, there's as of yet no plans for Android owners to get the same megatexturing goodness. Don't miss the video after the break, because this screenshot doesn't do it justice.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Carmack blows minds with id Software's Rage, running on iPhone at 60fps with 'megatextured' graphics (video)

Carmack blows minds with id Software's Rage, running on iPhone at 60fps with 'megatextured' graphics (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blockbuster including games in its by-mail rentals originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Aug 2010 10:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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