Fascinating... I must be missing something in my own post because 1) I don't see where I mentioned M$ or ANY company.
Indeed you didn't name a specific company, you mentionned "It really seems HTML5 is trying to make everybody buy new computers, which is ridiculous. [...] As of now, all of this mess with HTML5 seems like the usual: Corporate stupidity."
Corporate stupidity, once again the great threat of ?ber-companies that want to dominate the world and take all your money, etc...
This discussion already happened several times over the forum and generaly degenerates and ends up in closed threads.
I must admit I saw red and misread your original post, and mixed up the following discussion with wink and Metal_X (yeah Adobe will try to slow down HTML5 development... how could they, seriously ? what grasp do they possibly have on this issue ? This bit of the discussion is pure speculation, for the sake of nay-saying imo.)
Anyway, I went ahead of myself and went more personal/emotional/angry in my answer more than I should have.
—: I apologize for that.
Ashley cleared the issue (as I tried a bit too by mentioning also the post about drivers), it's not a conspiracy it's lazyness on the part of some driver vendors.
I don't expect a modern HTML5 or even a native modern EXE game to run on a 90's computer, however computer from at least 2005 should be able to run HTML5 like they run EXE. We are talking about 2D game here for crying out loud. Maybe they will, but will it be too late for HTML5 before then? Nobody can tell and I hope not.
In 2005, DX11 and HTML5 didn't exist.
You don't expect your 2005 machine to execute DX11 but you expect it to execute HTML5.
Despite the very fact that it relies on browsers (and so already occupies a fair amount of CPU/RAM ressources) and that it has to go through the graphic card process (once again, an integrated graphical chipset is not the same as an ATI or Nvidia child-board) or be calculated directly by the CPU (which already calculates the flash video/game/ads you're buffering/streaming, your opened webmail page, and a bunch of other web applications without counting the browser's extensions and the desktop's widgets and the peer to peer software).
This + this + that, in the end, despite the 2D aspect of the graphics, there are tons of operations going on.
And gear that is not originaly optimized/designed to support so many operations and that doesn't get decent drivers can't be expected to cope with this.
Computers have always been like this. In a 6 months span, the previous "generation" of CPUs and graphic cards were rendered almost obsolete.
All the 90's were so, and beginning of the 2000's too.
This past years, it can appear to stabilize, but that's still not the case. (we've gone from pentium to quad core and more, that's an incredible step further in power, but also a requisite for decent HTML5 performances)
2005 was 7 years ago. Computers are not living room consoles, if you want to stay in the "now" of gaming, you need to invest in better gear regulary, you can't expect your gear to last 10 years and be able to cope with the software novelties.
You can blame all the misery in the world, at some point it's the user's responsability to be properly equiped too.
Computers from 2005 won't last another 5 year anyway (at least not for current and "then" games). Some people won't update and stay on "old software/hardware" (kinda like people still using windows 95 when XP has been released for years (?)). Others will do the expense at some time (buying a brand new computer for the family) an affordable more modern computer that will handle some of the most recent technologies (pro tip: apple is really expensive for what it is).
Poor people, rich people. In the end it doesn't matter, people ****** interested in playing the games the more comfortably possible will take the extra step to update and buy hardware.
They'll save for months and invest for years to come.
I don't have a smartphone, but I have a decent computer, it's a matter of priorities I guess.
And so, rest assured HTML5 games work fine on computers that can run BF3 in high details, so now all that is left for C2 users is to make games that those players will enjoy playing.