IMHO, the kind of games that Java is well suited for (simplish, short development time, deployed through web browser) are more easily done in Flash these days, especially with the advances of Actionscript 3.

On the other hand, LWJGL sounds very neat and Flash/AS3 doesn't support anything like that yet.

When it comes to all this: "Performance matters" and "C++ is the only way", I like to remember a certain presentation reflecting (see the link at end of the post) on one of the highly-acclaimed high-end projects.

I'll go with whatever these people say, since they have proven they know not only their stuff, but can deliver, and have consistently pushed the limits.

One quote I find very relevant:

Quote:- When updating 10,000 objects at 60 FPS, everything is performance-sensitive
But:
- Productivity is just as important
- Will gladly sacrifice 10% of our performance for 10% higher productivity
- We never use assembly language
- There is not a simple set of “hotspots” to optimize!

There's also other interesting tidbits in that article demonstrating where most of the time is spent. Or better yet, 50% of game code only takes up 10% cpu time.

And followed up with discussion on what experience on Unreal has shown the common problems are. The article dismisses not only Java, but also C++/C# and the current crop of languages altogether in favor of different solutions (none of which are practical right now), especially considering the multi-core chipsets, something that has since become reality.

But at the end of the day, C++ is not "the ultimate" and Java is not "slow". The smartest attitude one can take is to choose the best tool for the job. Productivity, development time and budgets matter.

So make sure to know why something is or isn't "slow", what are the advantages of certain platform, and how to best utilize it.

At least in the big picture, the whole deal determines the winners and losers.

Quote:Honestly do you really think after like ~10 years there is any chance of Java gaining any major ground in the games industry?

Major ground? 80% market share? No. Unreal killer? No. StarCraft 2 platform? No. Then again, what portion of game industry are Flash games?

Game industry is as much Unreal as Pirates of the Carribean is movie industry. It's the most prominent titles. Then there's hundreds of thousands of others who are part of it.

Java currently stands good chance with Sun's backing of online gaming platforms, providing both software and hardware. That, coupled with overall Java's server maturity opens a lot of doors with networking becoming ubiquitous in gaming.

Just remember: This is not a competition about which language is more leet. The winner is the one who makes the best game, where best is a very subjective term.

I have to say, there's some utter rubbish posted in this thread.

First of all, Java DOES have a proper/official binding to OpenGL - it's called JOGL.

Java is perfectly capable of creating AAA games, the only issues in the way are
(a) Inertia - developers will use what they know (there's nothing wrong with that, either) and
(b) Tools - though, this is less of a problem, it is true that existing tools are designed to work in a C/C++ pipeline.
(c) Console support - probably the biggest issue.

None of those issues are due to anything inherent in Java, they are political and social issues.