Ok, I am a died in the wool gameCuber, but the fact that you can DIY Flashify your X-Box 360 is very cool. That nagging voice that says “it can run flash, you must buy it” is becoming louder. Also Engadget’s X-Box meets Flash meets the borg logo is also fun.

Microsoft has released a patch to the 360 that among other things closes the ability to run Flash. This is about as useful as that windows update that just lets you (and your Redmond-based overlord) verify that your copy of windows is legal. Even though the epic battle of Adobe V. Microsoft seem to be really gearing up, I hope that Flash will be a legitimate reality on all consoles at some point.

UI development in commercial games is generally lame, hard to do, and often has a different “feel” from the game itself. My understanding of the process is that the UI always ends up being a crunch time project and a fairly complex one when you aren’t using a tool so perfectly suited to the task as Flash. For any application, Flash is an excellent tool for adding great visuals, good capabilities and for going from .

A couple of years ago I went to a great presentation at Flash Forward NYC about how Orange Design had dramatically improved the UI development and design process for Lucas Arts by making the UI for several of their PS2 games run in Flash. I’ve never been clear if the player is on PS2’s or if it is software running on the specific discs (For more information, click on the Lucas Arts in Orange Design’s “Applications” section).

There was also an interesting article on GameSpot about how Flash may make its way onto the PSP and that it hasn’t been “intentionally ignored.”

Now if Nintendo would see the light, all would be well with the world.

I will be presenting at Flash Forward 2006, Seattle on Flash Lite design and all the cool new features of Flash Lite 2.0 (which is available in the Adobe Lab). I have become one of those mobile geeks that I have long feared becoming. I have multiple phones because of how they use Flash differently. My IPaq runs Flash, I have a U10 just because it runs Flash. I’ve been strongly considering getting a leapPad. You get the idea.

I will be bringing my gadgets to show how the device itself is the moving target for development. Flash does an amazing job of unifying devices so that you can do single SWF development, but how you interact with your divide still has a really strong impact on your overall application. I will talk about UI strategies for designing for multiple devices, and how to avoid some of the pitfalls of moving from web-based application design to devices.

As I ramble on, I will also talk about some of the new features made available in Flash Lite 2.0 and why they are so important to designing an application well for mobile devices. Most Flash developers I know won’t touch Flash Lite because of the Flash 4 syntax. Now that that is no longer an obstacle, hopefully the floodgates will open and we will see a lot more development in this space.

In addition to speaking, I was very pleased to be selected as a judge for this conference’s Flash Film Festival. I was a second round judge, so my work is already done, but I hope that you will go to the film festival site and participate in the people’s choice vote.