Unity or Flash to start 2d development?

My main goal to start out is to make some simple, but interesting 2d games to start off. Maybe something I can publish on a portal like kongregate or addictinggames.
The thing is, I don't know if i should use unity for that, since you are forced to download the unity player to play the game.
Most computers already have flash, so going on kongregate and playing the game is simple. I feel like people will be turned off of a game if they have to download another player just to play a game. They'd rather go play a flash game instead.
Especially since a lot of portals have seperate sections for Unity games in 2d. They don't seem to do as well as flash.

 

Well, you're on the Unity forums, so guess what I'm gonna recommend?

Reasons:
1. Flash is a dying technology. Learning it will be slightly less applicable to future projects than Unity, which keeps getting bigger and better with each update.
2. You'll get your games done faster in Unity because it does much more for you than Flash or an average Flash-based engine.
3. While your concern about distribution is valid, you're counting your carts before they horse*. Worry about finishing a game first. (See #2)

*Didn't want to be cliche.

 

Agreed with the above poster about flash being a dying technology, stay away from it is a waste to learn skills that may not be applicable in the not to distance future. The advantage of Unity is you can easily modify your game to work on the mobile platform, without needing a different engine. But if you do decide you only want an "in browser" game, then a HTML5 engine may be a good way to go. You will learn a future standard technology, and possibly be able to port your code to mobile(I'm not sure about that though). Good luck