What is Reach3dfx, you ask? It is a brand new fully featured, highly advanced 3D game engine that was revealed at the game Developers Conference earlier this year, that works across iOS, Android, Flash, and HTML5 platforms. It is based on the OpenFL framework and Haxe, and allows for an extremely high end 3D game experience to be delivered on these platforms that have traditionally been viewed as low end.

Gamebase, the guys who are working on this engine, have announced a close beta test for the upcoming engine, which will will showcase the HTML5 version and all features of the engine. For those invited, the closed beta test will run until August 18^th. 

If you are a game developer for the smaller, lower end platforms, this may be a good chance for you to get the jump on what appears to be a fairly full featured engine; for mobile game developers, it has never been a better time, as currently, they have access to a full range of great engines, including Unreal Engine 4, Unity, and now Reach3dx.

The advantages of avoiding legacy issues and a “quirky language like Javascript” are also manifold. However, when asked if this would become a threat to the traditional publishing model – since you wouldn’t need console specific versions if games could be run off the browser itself – Sweeney replied that, “It’s a big area of future tension.

“There’s great competition between all the browser makers to make them all as standards-compliant as possible, but when you combine that with the platform-holder who wants to tax app sales on their platform, there’s an economic motive to resist fully-standardized, high-performance HTML5 and Javascript.”

Rein chimed in by stating that, “With consoles, since they’re the same configuration, for the most part, you work really hard to make those games push into every crevice of performance for the platform, and the compiled Javascript will never get you that kind of performance you get from optimizing native to the hardware.

“But on PC, where you have virtually unlimited ranges of power – and most people have more PC than you need to play what you consider “web games” – you’ll have lots of capabilities. But on the console, you see the big blockbuster games like Gears of War, people expect every last pixel to be lit up.”

And as long as people expect those kind of experiences from their specialized consoles, it’ll be a while before they’re willing to play a more “generalized” version off their web browsers.

These can then be run on multiple formats including Steam, HTML5, Facebook, Android, iOS, Windows and OS X. Gamers can download a free version and purchase packages that unlock features, functionality and additional export options. GameMaker: Studio integrates with Steam Workshop, allowing developers to publish games onto the platform, which is of course good news for Greenlight developers.

Mark Richardson at Valve states, “Our community has been asking for us to expand the creative possibilities within Steam and we’ve done that today with the availability of the Steam Software Store and GameMaker: Studio. Now that we’ve provided unprecedented access to and support of the best technology, we hope to soon see a huge surge of great content published to our community and submitted to Steam Workshop and Greenlight.”