Square Enix announces Mini Ninjas as the first Native Client game for Chrome

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Square Enix’s Mini Ninjas, a popular 2009 action-adventure game, is coming to the Chrome Web Store, the publisher announced yesterday. It will be the first game to utilize the Native Client SDK beta that Google released at Google I/O in May of this year as an open-source technology for running native compiled code in the browser. Chief executive officer of Square Enix Holdings, Yoichi Wada, says Native Client “enables the same consumer experience in the browser as in a native application”.

The game will require Chrome 17 Beta which will be available in the coming weeks (support for native code execution first appeared in Chrome 14). Mini Ninjas will be entering an open beta in December. The blurb promises console-quality gaming in the browser and invites fans of Mini Ninjas to “chart the journey of Hiro, the world’s smallest hero on his biggest quest, as he embarks on an epic quest to restore harmony to a world on the brink of chaos”. Square Enix promised more Chrome games utilizing native code execution “within the next year”.

SpaceTime Studios, the brains behind the popular MMO Pocket Legends, will be also taking advantage of Native Chrome Client to bring its MMO series to Chrome, allowing for cross-platform compatibility with their PC, Android and iOS releases.