Impact Gamedev XDK from appMobi
Update Tuesday, June 26th 2012: appMobi's XDK is now available for free if you have a valid Impact license. You can also buy the license together with the XDK over at appMobi.com for the same price.
Original post follows.
If you have been following the forums a bit, you've probably seen some of the guys from appMobi giving advice and engaging in discussions. appMobi provides a platform to get HTML5 apps and games into various AppStores and provides additional cloud services. Impact has been working great with appMobi already, but today it's getting even better.
appMobi developed a technology for iOS called DirectCanvas: it takes the JavaScript source, runs it directly with a JavaScript interpreter and draws everything with OpenGL. This bypasses Mobile Safari completely and as a result is a lot faster. You may remember my iOSImpact effort, where I did something similar, but in very experimental manner. The guys from appMobi actually had the expertise and resources to do it right.
So today, appMobi announced the Impact Gamedev XDK, which essentially is a bundle of their DirectCanvas technology and services with the Impact game engine. With this, your games will be first class citizens on the iPhone and iPad, indistinguishable from native ones.
Their licensing model is a bit different from mine: for $99 per year you get the Impact game engine, granted for up to 5 games, together with a whole host of appMobi's cloud services - which is quite a steal. If you are interested in developing mobile games, be sure to check it out!