I think all the hubbub is because the browser has dominated computing in the past decade. Being able to play a game on both your web browser and your smartphone

I think all the hubbub is because the browser has dominated computing in the past decade. Being able to play a game on both your web browser and your smartphone with only minor changes (input, screen scaling, and perhaps locked fps) is a big deal because everyone knows how to use a browser and the barrier to accessing your game is as trivial as currently possible. Having to actually install a game, even if it's just downloading and running an installer, is apparently a lot more annoying to users than you'd think. Unless some kind of native backend is written to make HTML5 apps just as responsive as plugin-based ones, I don't really see how this is going to be successful for games. The performance hit is just too gargantuan.