Re:Actionscript (Score 2, Informative)

I assumed the problem with using javascript was the inability to manipulate images at the bit level with relative ease. People have made some successful projects using the canvas object to handle their 'blitting,' but do all browsers even support it (shifting eyes at IE)?

Another (rather unrelated) issue would be the lack of a mature way to communicate between server and client - cheaply that is. If someone is going to make their own browser based graphic mud, that means they are going to have to write their own comet app. Not a lot of ppl are willing to write their own server. You can't really control how you want your game to do socked based communication.

But the main issue is the lack of ability to be able to program close enough to the 'metal.' That means no native support to take advantage of things like the video card for 3D, or sound card or what have you. Nor the fact that you can't simply plug in a gamepad controller and just playing your javascript game (at least, not without doing some config work on your gamepad prior).

Most games are (relatively) graphic intensive, and the people that code them want to have the freedom to be able to access the power of the computer that is running them. With different browsers having different javascript engines, you're going to end up with very inconsistent results when playing a game on IE compared to FF compared to Safari compared to Chrome. *shrug* I don't know, it just seems too much of a pain to take into account all those factors when trying to come up with consistent gaming experiences, at least with flash or java you can (somewhat) expect to have a common platform to develop on, considering the trouble people are having with cross-browser compatability when simply making web pages. (just being snarky) :-P