Unity U

The following came from this article: “Unity prices IPO above range at $52…
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/17/unity-prices-ipo-above-range…

Went public today at $52; closed at $68.35: “Unity prices IPO above range at $52, initially valuing game software company at $13.7 billion… The company raised its range on Wednesday to $44 to $48 from $34 to $42.

What they do - “Founded in 2004, Unity has become a major player in game creation over the past decade by giving developers the tools to create 3D titles for phones, consoles and the web without having to code for each platform. The company said in its prospectus that it has 1.5 million monthly active creators and that developers using its software are seeing over 3 billion downloads a month.

Some of the financial details: “Revenue in the first half of 2020 rose 39% from a year earlier to $351.3 million and the number of customers spending $100,000 or more increased to 716 from 515. Unity’s net loss in the first six months of the year narrowed to $54.1 million from $67.1 million a year ago

The following came from this article: “Unity vs Unreal…”
https://blog.udemy.com/unity-vs-unreal-which-game-engine-is-…

Their competition includes Unreal Engine: “Focusing on the game engines, Unity and Unreal Engine (aka UE4) are the two most popular game engines on the market today. They are the go-to tools for most indie developers. While many game development studios use their own proprietary game engines, plenty use Unity or Unreal…Unreal is associated with “better graphics” and offers a big studio AAA-quality to the games that use it. Epic Games, the company behind Unreal Engine, has seen epic success with its game Fortnite… Unity is known as the “make any game” engine and is ideal for indie developers. Over 50% of games across all platforms use Unity and 60% of all VR/AR content is powered by Unity. In reality, though, both engines are capable of making nearly any sort of game and deploying that game to most gaming platforms.

Platform support: “Unity Platform Integrations: iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8, Tizen, Android TV, Samsung SMART TV, Xbox One & 360, Windows PC, Mac OS X, Linux, Web Player, WebGL, HoloLens, SteamOS, PS4, Playstation Vita, and Wii U

Pricing: “* Personal is free to use and developers can make up to $100,000 USD a year through the plan. A requirement with this free use is including the “Made in Unity” splash screen in the game.
* Plus costs $40 per month with a one-year subscription. Developers can make up to $200,000 a year and also get extra benefits such as splash screen customization and Integrations with collaboration tools.
* Pro plans are $150 per month and have no annual revenue limit. You get all the benefits included with Plus, with an addition of 3 extra seats and a high-end art asset pack.

For those who want to dig deeper; here is the prospectus:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1810806/000119312520…

FYI, I have spent the last month exploring and enjoying virtual reality. I’ve met teachers, college professors, doctors, lawyers, dentists, DJ’s, tour guides, producers and many others in this environment. The future of Virtual Reality looks really bright and will look even brighter after Facebook releases the new Oculus Quest on October 13th (see link below for a Facebook link to their big announcement)… The reason I’m interested in Unity is because a large number of the people I’ve met in VR are world developers (Altspace, Horizons, etc.) and most are starting to take Unity classes (in VR). It’s needed to create some of the best, most interactive, worlds and definitely has a place in the long term development of VR.

IMHO, Unity is worth putting on the radar.

Best regards,

VR_Robear

Facebook’s Mark Zucker introduces the future of VR:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=357103208754306&extid=…

7 Likes

My employer uses Unity for all our product development. We publish games with millions of users on iOS and Android. These are some of the most popular games in the world.

We probably have more than 200 folks with Unity licenses. I use this software every day in my job.

The good part about this technology is that we can release the same code on both platforms for the most part with some native plugins for things that require it (like background processing, bluetooth device interfacing). In general our artists are also comfortable with it which means that they can tweak appearance and behavior of in game elements without having to involve engineering.

They also have an excellent support organization - whenever I’ve contacted them they’ve always been super helpful even developing custom integrations for us when we needed them.

On the downside the tools are somewhat clunky and buggy though they are generally always improving them. There’s not really a general organizing principle for how projects should be organized which gives more flexibility but it’s very easy to dig yourself into a hole which we’ve had to work very hard to avoid.

We plan on publishing our base technology as a platform for other developers to use and at the moment that means that other devs will also have to use Unity. We don’t currently have plans to support local native development or other engines like Unreal though I imagine that could happen in the future.

Happy to answer any questions.

20 Likes

I should add that any tool like this that puts an extra layer of interpretation between the developer and the machine leads to compromises. In our case it’s worth it because we don’t have to write two different code bases for the two platforms.

Some things are hard though - like text input doesn’t work very well, integrating with OS specific features can be clunky and you are limited to the least common denominator functionality on all platforms.

4 Likes