I commented on the linked articles in more depth regarding performance game dev w/ Java. I see someone mentioned libgdx in a comment here which is awesome. Also awesome to see mention of Slick. I'll just mention that I have been working for many years developing a mature component oriented platform for real time app & game dev in Java that spans J2SE & Android utilizing all the language features of Java without sacrificing performance. I am barreling towards initial release. It's called TyphonRT and a little more info is available here: http://www.typhonrt.org/ I'm aiming for an end of summer release and I hope you might want to consider Java (w/ Scala) & TyphonRT for you next project.. :)