Cool For Cats: Friskies Crafts Feline-Friendly Tablet Games

In what could be the first tablet experience developed for non-humans, Nestle Purina’s pet nutrition brand Friskies launched three HTML5- based web games for cats this week, designed for use on tablets and other touchscreen devices.

According to Friskies, the games, called Cat Fishing, Tasty Treasures Hunt, and Party Mix-Up, have been researched and tested to appeal to cats’ presumably discerning taste in mobile entertainment. Accessible at Gameforcats.com, the games involve the player tapping moving objects as they maneuver about the screen, including fish and other animals, as well as Friskies products. Cats that use Facebook are also prompted to join discussion around the brand there. Indeed, there’s a Facebook call-to-action on the home screen for all three games.

Though the demos of the games on the Friskies site all appear on iPad devices, the experiences are built entirely in HTML5, making them functional on almost any device or browser that supports the technology, such as Android tablets and smartphones.

As the adoption of tablet devices continues to spread, and the operating systems on which they run continue to diversify, agency executives are beginning to question the longevity of native applications versus HTML5 web apps. Why develop apps for both Android and iOS platforms, for example, when you can develop a HTML5 web app to function across both?

Speaking with ClickZ at the Mobile Upfront event in NYC earlier this month, multiple agency sources suggested brands will increasingly focus their attention on mobile and tablet-friendly web experiences rather than applications over the next few years, with native applications reserved for more niche audiences or uses.