It seems that a hardly a week goes by that there isn’t some news regarding HTML5 and gaming. It’s not too surprising, though, since HTML5 game engines have the potential to change gaming, making online play more accessible simply by virtue of being browser based and not requiring any plug-ins. Still, not everyone is convinced that HTML5 is necessarily a blessing, but rather a curse for games.

Those not convinced of HTML5’s potential in the gaming space, however, are quickly becoming outnumbered as more developers abandon more traditional methods to explore the possibilities HTML5 gaming allows. PlayCanvas, for example, recently announced that its cloud-based HTML5 game development platform is now in Open Beta.

The company was founded by two people quite familiar with the games industry: Will Eastcott, former European technical director for Activision (News – Alert) and product manager for the Renderware middleware at Criterion, and Dave Evans, a founding member of the PlayStation Home team. The PlayCanvas team, which collectively boasts more than 40 years of technical experience, has been working on its platform for about two years now with the goal of creating a powerful, end-to-end development and publishing solution for 3D HTML5 games. This Open Beta is a huge step toward finalizing that goal.

“PlayCanvas is the world’s first cloud-hosted game development platform. Developers finally have the ability to collaborate in real-time, access their projects from any device and join an online network of like-minded developers,” said Eastcott in a statement. “After honing the platform during our lengthy closed beta, we’re thrilled to open the doors to PlayCanvas and let everyone discover a better way to make games.”

In addition to achieving Open Beta status for its platform, PlayCanvas was also recently invited to demonstrate its technology to an audience of 300 at an event hosted by Techstars, a provider of seed funding for tech start-ups, providing a helpful media boost. Another great event in the HTML5 space is DevCon5, an HTML5 designer and developer conference that explores HTML5’s capabilities, impact on user experiences, performance on different devices, role in browser security and more. It’s happening Dec. 10-11 in Universal City, Calif – register now!