The web is a horrible platform to develop for. Terrible performance, terrible debugging support, browser incompatibilities, security issues, can’t even control the main loop of the game. The only reason I bother with it is so that anybody can play my games, directly in a web browser, without downloading it and without additional third-party software. So what’s the value proposition for removing that only advantage?
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Now, I can’t fully relate to the experiences you’ve had with web development. My games usually run well in the browser, and from my perspective, development there is actually one of the simplest approaches.
However, my games are mostly pixel art and focus more on content than performance, so it’s possible we have different perspectives on this.
The point is: people who are willing to pay for games would probably never consider paying for a downloadable HTML5 game. But if there is a dedicated file format and a virtual console behind it, it creates a sense of security for potential customers.
GameWare is not meant to remove the “advantages” of web games. Instead, it aims to give developers a secure way to distribute HTML5 games for download and potentially earn money from them—within a safe and trusted environment for users.
I’m just bitter that I can’t get my pixel art game, which runs at full 60fps natively, to run at more than 3fps in a web browser (running the exact same code on the same hardware) - and that’s after extensive optimization for the web platform. I already have native builds for Linux and Windows and they run fine. What other platforms do you offer? Macintosh? Playstation? Nintendo Switch? NetBSD? Haiku? DOS?
The point is: people who are willing to pay for games would probably never consider paying for a downloadable HTML5 game.
You might want to do some research there. People even give money to non downloadable html5 games. Reality is the opposite of your claim. The downloadable version of a web game is actually an incentive to buy the game. That the downloadable version would just be an html file, is not a deterrent. Maybe for compatibility reasons, so some devs just pack a browser, to ensure the game will actually run offline.