Unity Passes 2,000,000 Developers, Upcoming Features in 4.2, and Unite 2013

Unity Engine

2,000,000 Unity Developers

On July 9, Unity Technologies announced that they have passed two million registered developers using the Unity Engine. That is a huge development community!

Congratulations to Unity Technologies, and all the developers using the Unity Engine!

Upcoming Features in Unity 4.2

Unity co-founder and CTO Joachim Ante and VP Development Lucas Meijer talk briefly about the features coming to Unity in version 4.2 during the keynote address from the Unite Nordic conference.

Joining the list of free mobile publishing targets previously made available to all developers, Unity 4.2 will include the ability to develop for Blackberry 10, Windows Phone 8, Windows RT, and Windows 8. Note that while creating the mobile targets is now included in the free Unity package, publishers are still required to submit their games to the appropriate parties (such as the Windows Store, Steam, etc), which may require additional licensing fees.

It was also recently announced during the Microsoft Build conference that, thanks to a strategic partnership between Unity and Microsoft, Unity Pro will have the ability to deploy directly to Windows Phone 8, Windows 8 and Windows RT for free. This partnership also paves the way for Unity tools to be available for the Xbox One entertainment system, including support for many next-generation features like enhanced Kinect gestures and recognition, multiplayer matchmaking, SmartGlass and cloud storage. Developers who build games published by Microsoft Studios get the tools for both Xbox 360 and Xbox One, free of charge.

Unite 2013 Conference

Unity’s biggest developer event, Unite 2013, will be held in Vancouver on August 28-30. Of course, the biggest news for us as Ultima fans is that Richard Garriott de Cayeux will be delivering the Guest Keynote on his thoughts on Unity and game development. Garriott’s current project, Shroud of the Avatar, is not only the spiritual successor to the Ultima series, but it is being developed using the Unity engine.

For a preview of his thoughts on using Unity, Garriott talked about developing with Unity last month in this video.

The Unite Nordic conference was held earlier this year. A selection of videos can be found from this event, as well as prior Unite conferences. Of special note is the talk by Charles Palmer of CCP, who’s Eve Online combat demo for the Oculus Rift VR headset was named “Game of E3” by PC Magazine. Funny, I seem to recall a stretch goal for Shroud of the Avatar that involved the Oculus Rift…

Asset Store Summer Daily Deals

The Unity Asset Store is obviously the place to go to get Unity assets, including models, objects, code, music, snap-in systems, code, and more. However, because the vast majority of these assets are providing financial income to their users, they cannot simply give away these assets. Instead, the Unity Asset Store is having daily deals, where they mark down the price for a selected item for purchase.

You can find the current deal here, or watch the Unity Twitter feed for new Summer Daily Deals.