Unity's Growth Continues: 750,000 Registered Developers
Copenhagen originated Unity Technologies announced on Tuesday that its development platform for games and interactive 3D has surpassed 750,000 registered developers. This marks a 50% increase in developers in just four months and it appears that Unity is bringing the year to a close with continued record growth.
After receiving a $12 million Series B investment from Asian venture capitalists in July, CEO David Helgason predicted that 40% of Unity’s business will come from China within the next 18 months. No details were released on where the current growth is coming from, but the figures are definitely impressive. Over the course of the past year, the number of registered developers has tripled from 250,000 to 750,000 (26% active monthly) and Unity Web Player installations have doubled from 40 million to 80 million.
Unity Technologies Closes $12M In Financing - Eyes Asia
Unity Technologies, a Copenhagen originated startup now based in Silicon Valley, has closed a $12 million in financing from WestSummit Capital in China and iGlobe Partners in Singapore, according to Techcrunch. The financing round is Unity's second and an investor from the first round, Sequoia Capital, also participated in the round.
Sony Ericsson Announces The PlayStation Phone, Comes With Unity
Sony Ericsson announced tonight the launch of the new "PlayStation phone", officially called Xperia PLAY, shipping this March. The device will be the first PlayStation Certified Android device, running Gingerbread 2.3. One of the first primary markets will be the US where Sony Ericsson partners with Verizon exclusively, the company announced at a launch event taking place in a hip Barcelona beach club prior to the Mobile World Congress.
Interestingly, the Danish-born Unity Technologies has struck a deal with Sony Ericsson for the new device, in which Unity's technology comes embedded. The partnership is the first of its kind for Unity that hasn't teamed up this way with a platform manufacturer before.
Unity Technologies Eases 3D Game Development for iPhone and Wii
Unity Technologies is a Danish gaming technology startup. They provide tools for creating visually-rich 3D downloadable, online, iPhone and Wii games, or other interactive content like as architectural visualizations or real-time 3D animations. The company is based in Copenhagen, but has an international team and a sales office in San Francisco.
The company's main product is Unity multi-platform game development tool, including a 3D game engine, which enables developers to create cutting-edge 3D content supposedly faster and more efficiently than with other tool sets. The Unity editor only runs on Mac OS X, but it can be used to produce games for Mac, Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Nintendo Wii, and iPhone. In addition, it's possible to publish a web game played inside a normal web browser from the same project, the visual fidelity being identical to the standalone version. This is achieved by the company's own Unity Web Player Plug-in for the most common web browsers. The plug-in is said to be already distributed in "6-digit" numbers.
Over the past couple of years, the company has gotten lots of new clients from indie and small shop developers, and a few high-profile customers including Disney, Sony Motion Pictures, and Cartoon Networks. Unity has been used in games, advergaming and edutainment projects, and technology demos. There is quite impressive a variety of games (latest best).
The company promises to combine usability, power, and platform reach in their tools, and seems there is user support for the claim as well. The framework is said to have built-in fallbacks and workarounds to provide solid support for almost all hardware and software combinations. It also presents features like Live Preview for playing the game exactly as it is and do real-time modification, Click to Publish to build the game with one click and running it with another, even directly on an iPhone. Unity also claims that with their tools the developers get the best out of iPhone, "consistently beating GL ES benchmarks by 30-40%." However, while Unity has features supporting ease of use, like drag-and-drop, it's still script-based programming tool, so not perfectly suitable for purely visual designers alone.
Unity Technologies is a technology company by heart, they state they're "all about building technology, driving it forwards, and supporting it." The company offers the tool with a standard licensing model, differentiating between small developers and companies with turnover in above USD 100,000.
Unity probably finds the biggest market within smaller indie developers and in different special projects (like WolfQuest and Axe Billions), while the big companies most likely will keep using and developing their own tools. Considering the real mass-market, online web gaming, the web plug-in works neatly, but the biggest drawback is exactly the need for it. It's not possible to install new plugins in many of the public or workplace computers, even though the installation of the Unity plug-in is quick in itself. Gaming sites offering Flash-based games have become hugely popular due to the fact the Flash plug-in is available in pretty much all main browsers. Breaking into the mass-market will thus be difficult. Also, the market for in-browser 3D gaming is still relatively small compared to casual 2D games. There's also competition, like Adobe ShockWave and services like InstantAction competing for the hardcore gamers. In iPhone game development, on the other hand, it will be interesting to see what kind of customer base Unity is able to get.
If you want to check out a demo, see Unity's Tropical Paradise browser demo.
