Full Unreal Engine 4 Developer Kit $19/MO + 5% / Why can't Unity Offer the same!

Well that's a fantastic attitude. A fellow Unity Technologies employee stated that you as a company are communicating through email lists, but other customers have no way to see them.

If these emails are specifically designed for 100+ people, then why would you as a company use them as "proof" that you are communicating with your paying customers.

Your title is Product Evangelist and you've posted a total of nine times, and your ninth one is insulting. Amazing.

 

I didn't know that a company needs to share it's emails with everyone. Is that a new business practice going around? Thought businesses kinda keep things to you know their business.
Do you even know what Andy does for unity?
Unity employees are trying to keep it professional as best as they can. Don't you think the constant ragging on them doesn't take its toll?

 

Of course they don't have to share their emails, but then an employee for Unity shouldn't use them as examples of ways they communicate with their customers. This is pretty simple logic.

"We don't think you communicate enough."
"We do! We have an email list that goes out every day!"
"Email list? I can't find any email list."
"Oh, that's not for you, that's only for 100 specific customers, not the thousands of people who pay for our product. And now I'm going to be snarky about it"
"So...how is this communicating again?"

His profile says he's a Product Evangelist. So yes, I do know. As an evangelist he should know better.

UT is a for-profit company selling a product, people are complaining about lack of vision and lack of communication, if you consider that "ragging" than your skin is much to thin, because what has been said in this thread does not deserve that sort of response from an employee of UT.

If you look back in this thread I defended Unity as a company, as they have a right to conduct business the way they see fit, but snarky responses to paying customers is just silly and only makes Mr. Touch and the entire company look immature and unprofessional.

 

I'm not saying at all you are. If you took it as that my apologies.
This whole topic has been going on and on. Would you think people would focus all this energy into a kickass game. And I don't care if you coded it with BASIC.

 

I think it's clear that quite a few people just want some reassurances from UT that they are continuing to develop the project, instead they feel they are kept in the dark. At the same time, you have a rival company with much bigger backing (their parent company) doing a heck of a lot to try and eat UT's lunch and being completely transparent about it, so it's definitely a concern for people who are committing to using an engine to create a game.

A few people in this thread alone have said that they have already paid for UT 5.0 and are just hoping that it's good, and there is literally a two year window from when that might come out. That's a massive window and even then we don't know for sure what will be in it, this frightens people.

Even more important than the license changes is transparency, and UT doesn't have much of it at the moment. Up until a few months ago, it didn't really matter since using another engine was much too expensive, but that isn't the story today. UT just needs to learn to adapt, that's all.

 

Seriously? You guys are shooting yourselves in the foot, real badly.

The fact that its been almost 5 months now, and with people screaming for Unity to be competitive with your pricing, and that UT still hasnt made up its mind on it is absurd.


And you cant be serious with this comment "Of all the various people and types of studios that use Unity, there's only really one group that feels we're not offering them a compelling value proposition right now: those making little or no money on games at the moment such as students, hobbyists, and new pro developers just starting out or without any money."

So you are saying UT thinks everyone who is successful and has lots of money thinks its perfectly okay? So there are no people on the forum with lots of money or who are successful that want to see prices more competitive? Or that dont mind spending couple thousand each time they have to upgrade? ..... Get real. I've seen plenty of long time and successful Unity users who posted saying they want prices to be competitive and for it to be changed.

That also makes it seem like UT thinks "meh, who cares. The only people that have a problem with it are the poor ones so we dont need to worry about them because the big studios said they're ok with the pricing".

 

@bibbinator

Brett, there seems to be a missing group in your statement here. What about people who had the money, but couldn't afford to wait for basic featuresets like a 64-bit editor? Not to mention all the additional tools. Even with the amount of discussion going on, it's not always about money!.

I got in contact with you guys beginning of this year to see what's going on and I appreciate whenever I talk you, you've always been great to deal with. But enough is enough, if I knew at least "When" Unity 5.0 was going to peak it's head out of the door than I probably would of stuck around. With 4.3 UE4 had become lightning quick and looks great whilst doing it and I was the first one beating at the door with 4.1 when it ran like a dog, were working on a 24KM level streamed scene that runs better than Unity did with a 2K map.

Also cost me nothing for PS4 license, the err additional middleware like Enlighten was the stinger in the whole situation.

Epic said come back in six months if you don't want to potentially hit a lot of bugs, how long before Unity 5.0 becomes stable?

 

Yea... Sorry, I do fully understand it, and have many years of experience working with and building/supporting on top of OSS. Of course you can sell OSS, (have done so). But free of cost is a right that is central to OSS. If I gain access to a OS project, I have the right to give it away for free (or charge). That is not an aspect of the Unreal license. More importantly, use of the Unreal software/source means you agree to pay royalties to Epic. Hence you are required to compensate Epic regardless of where you got the source. That isn't any variant of OS. And Unreal has never claimed it was.

 

I'm a free user, one man band, and have been looking at/playing with/learning Unity stuff for about 18 months now (though I have been concentrating on games made with another engine up to now, and I'm just finishing my last fully 2D game with an interest in 3D stuff).

So yeah, I'm a free user, who hasn't made a game with Unity yet, but has spent a huge amount on the asset store (I'm embarrassed to say how much exactly, but we're in high triple digits here :O ).

I've already adjusted my spending, and I'm glad at least that I know now which way Unity is probably going.

I think some people get frustrated and feel like they're not being listened to because the perception is that UT has selective hearing. It listens, but only hears the positives from the 'successful/experienced' users, while the vast majority of users don't fall into this category and are seemingly ignored.

(Before someone calls me on it, no I don't know the ratio between successful Unity users and the not so lucky ones. But I'm kinda going with the generally well know notion that few developers are successful across iTunes/google/steam etc - as an old work colleague used to tell me, 90% of all money made in games is by 10% of the people making them!).

It's fine. I've bought some frameworks and a huge bunch of other assets from the store. I probably have a few more to get and a list of games I'd like to make. And I will certainly do my best to make some fun games with Unity Free if I can!

But I will be cutting down my expenditure significantly, with an eye on trying out other alternatives open to me now. As I mentioned in a previous thread, if I could afford Unity Pro, I would actually spend the money getting a new computer instead that could run UE4.

Just my $0.2

QS =D

 

Anyways thank you for your reply, after over 700 posts it was a bit late.

Product takeaways:

• Improved communication across the board - at first glance. It is not acceptable that you only take into account the feedback of 100+ privileged users within a email list.
  
• Frequent, regular tech blog posts - check
  
• Fix more bugs, and then release fixes faster - check
  
• Public, maintained, prioritized, votable roadmaps that includes bugs - delayed.
  
• Community manager(s) will help ensure all posts needing a dev to answer gets answered - can't comment
  
• Provide Starter Kits to show best-practices and jumpstart user projects - haven't seen something new
  
• More documentation improvements - new layout check. I think it would be less work for UT when it would be more open like wikipedia. Everyone with knowledge could correct or expand missing explanations.
  
• Cleanup Answers site - can't comment
  
• Integrate Feedback site stuff on Roadmaps - where is the roadmap?
  
• Mono, MonoDevelop upgrade or replacement - can't comment
  
• HD/SD asset support, also integrated with uGUI - can't comment
  
• Finish out and upgrade feature that aren't there yet - no roadmap no knowing what Unity will offer
  
• NavMesh upgrade - check(?)
  
• Particle System upgrade - check
  
• Terrain system upgrade - check
  
• Input system upgrade - check, when will those system upgrades be available? In version 5.0?
  
• Help with post-launch services such as IAP, leaderboards, etc. - can't comment
  
• Visual Shader editor - friendly reference to the asset store?
  
• Visual Programming - same
  
• Cinematic/Sequence editor - no news
  
• Replace Asset Server, better support for collaboration - can't comment
  
• Maybe Render to Texture should be Free - how realistic is this?
  
• More multi-core, multi-threaded, parallelization enhancements and optimizations across all platforms - what is the status?
  
• Memory management improvements and optimization - can't comment
  
• Nested prefabs - I think in Unity 5.0?
  
• Asset Store improvements - can't comment

Pricing takeaways:

• Some people love subscription, some love perpetual, so need to keep both - check
  
• Would like some way to have Pro features more affordable, possibly free, watermark or royalty for this is okay - So I can only buy seperatly the dark skin for $1,500? You don't want to take additional money where it would be possible? Why not? Is it because Unity isn't as modulate to support such a option?
  
• Those that like subscription think the price though is too high - It still is, for something you don't even own in the end.
  
• Most individuals and small teams are okay with spending around $1,500 for Pro if it included all the add-ons - looks like you will stick to $4,500 including android and iphone pro expansion pack.

Sorry for the Quote, but regarding the pricing takeaways it looks like this :/

 

From what i read, they won't go Royalties any time, so Free will always be a downgraded version. To use Pro you have to put the money.
People that are listened and responded are people successfully selling a game, so they mainly dialog with people on serious buziness like in the past. A forum can be heavy time consuming and they can't put ressources to manage forums only, so i understand that way of choosing with who they can put time to dialog with.

 

To clarify, our email lists service thousands of customers with thousands of replies. And email lists aren't outdated technology, they're highly focused, threaded streams which make it easy to understand and process compared to forums which are obviously much broader.

 

Yeah, I see nothing wrong with mailing lists.

Cheers for the update, there's a lot of good info in there.

For what it's worth with pricing info, the lack of an announcement one way or the other has been a factor against me deciding to buy a personal Pro license over the past few months. You guys have a habit of making more and more stuff available to us for free, so whenever I consider "do I want a Pro license yet?" the idea that there might be an upcoming announcement has always made me think "I can wait a bit longer". It's not that I think the price is unreasonable (I don't - though for my small indie group we'd be talking about $9000 to get Pro on the platforms we target, and that's a challenging figure), it's that I didn't want to spend a bundle of cash and then find that the price just dropped, or that the features we wanted access to are now free anyway (any word on whether free license functionality might be revised?).

 

Well to be fair, it was a UT employee who said "100+", so I'm not sure what it is I was supposed to believe. I guess you could argue thousands is technically "100+", but that'd be disingenuous.

The problem is that you as a company have a chance to control your message, but you are choosing not too. If you truly want to get a roadmap out there, why isn't it a blog post? You could always have it as a blog post then just move it over to a permanent page with some more bells and whistles when the web team has time.

And while emails lists in themselves aren't bad, why wouldn't you also publish them so new Users could read them? Why the secret knock, wink-wink, private handshake? Just post them so people can read them. Getting told "sure, we communicate, you just don't know about it" means you aren't communicating.

I get it, running a company isn't easy, I know I've done it (and continue to do it), and this is the kind of stuff that nobody likes. Nobody gets excited to create web pages with roadmaps, or gets thrilled about automating a process to move emails lists to blog posts. But these are thing things that good companies do, the boring, mundane hard stuff, because it separates them from their competitors. It's the last 10% that makes the entire difference.

 

Price is the big issue for me. I'm one of those guys who is just just starting out developing without any money. Unity Free doesn't work for me because it won't work with the Oculus Rift or with plugins for Sixense's hydra (and later STEM) controllers. Blender would work with the hydra but not the Rift and has licensing issues for selling games. UDK had horrendous terms. $2500 per year to develop software that I use in my business plus 25% royalties on anything I sell including training course for the software. I never would have been able to pay $1500 upfront for Unity. Even the decision to go with the subscription was tough. I had to make the decision early on whether I could justify spending at least $900 on a project that had no guarantee of success in an area that I had no experience. If UE4 was present at the time I could have easily kept upfront costs to under $100. It's not out of the question that Unity could be much cheaper for me in the long run but if UE4 was available back then, I probably have gone with it instead of Unity. For now, I'll stick with Unity until my year subscription runs out. I'll have to reevaluate then.

If you look at the Oculus forums there are a couple of people asking whether Unity or UE4 would be better. Lots of people suggesting UE4. Not many people are suggesting Unity. $20 is appealing and many people aren't thinking about the royalties.

How about allowing people/entities that make less than say $40,000 on software use a watermarked version of Unity pro and then pay for a full version just before selling the game? That way it is more affordable to those of us just starting out but it will prevent big companies from just developing on free versions of Unity and buying a single license when they are ready to ship.

 

Well, no, because to be fair the guy who said "100+" wasn't using the number as an example of any of the Unity mailing lists at all. He was asking someone else what other solution they could suggest for a use case where more than 100 specific individuals were to be contacted directly.

I don't understand the implication about the "secret knock, wink-wink, private handshake" fluff, either. They're talking about feedback groups, many of whom are giving feedback about stuff that's wholly or partly behind NDAs. If they weren't closed groups then they couldn't exist. You say you're running your own business, so surely you do understand that keeping some stuff behind closed doors is done out of necessity and not to promote an elitist inner-circle secret society, right?

 

I can only go by what I am reading. One employee of UT says they are sending stuff out to 100+ entities, this is not feedback coming back, this is information UT is sending out. Another UT employee stated that they have just been slow on the roadmap, not that the roadmap was a secret. Again, this is all right here in the forum. I'm not asking UT to disclose anything super secret, like alliance they are negotiating with third parties for example. But seeing as they are open to the idea of a roadmap, I'd bet you a dollar that said roadmap has been included in the email lists. Maybe not in a single email, but the contents would be spread across all their emails, so that is the secret, wink-wink, club I'm talking about in that they only feel an incredibly small subset of their customers deserve to know about what is in the pipeline.

Also, other than specific negotiations, the idea of keeping features secret is just silly. There's is very little that they could reveal on the roadmap that is going to come as a surprise that they'd considering doing it. But the problem is, without a roadmap, nobody knows what they are planning. So while feature X might not be a surprise if they were to do it, nobody knows if it's going to happen.

So let's please not go down the route that everything in these emails is super secret that can't be revealed due to NDAs, otherwise they'd refuse to have a roadmap in the first place. Ideas are a dime a dozen, it's execution that matters. Revealing what they plan to build will only have a positive impact on customers.

 

You're posting on one.

 

No, lets not get mixed up about what people are talking about. The roadmap that's to be posted on the website for the public is one thing. Mailing lists amongst specific user groups are another.

 

I think Unite 2014 in Aug will be my deciding point...

If Unity stick their heads in the sand and continue with the current path, oh well it was fun while it lasted.

Hope they FINALLY respond with some news we can all go, YES...omg thank you...

Make or Break in my book.

 

You are either reading incorrectly, or don't understand how an email list works. What specifically was said was:

Email lists by vendors/companies are a very common practice. I am on more than dozen with a variety of vendors from Apple, Adobe, Autodesk, etc. Some of our team is on some of the Unity ones, and have been on others from time to time. We have many of our own for select players and other parties. They work not too different from fourms, in that they are threaded discussions. They aren't just a means for a company to send out announcements, they are typically active discussions, and a way to get feedback. (though some of Adobe's are more like marketing). And usually the lists tend to be very narrow in focus, as bibbinator said. Often around a specifc product or use specific usage area.

Just because they are not public doesn't mean they are "secret". (though on occasion they may be, like in an closed beta/alpha). Usually they are a way to get focused feedback from valued sources in particular areas. Most of the ones I am on discuss any un-announced products or features. (there are a couple of exceptions).

I believe the point he was making was simply that they are listening to feedback and that the forums are just one of the methods of feedback/interaction with their users.

 

I think everyone needs to manage their expectations around Unite 2014.

Brett has just said that no changes to pricing will be announced there (qualifying that with “never say never, but as of now there are no plans to announce a price change.”). In another thread, Aurore said that Unity 5 will not made available at the same time as 4.6. Therefore, I think the most we can hope for is that 4.6 will be released on the first day of Unite, and a firm date for U5 will be announced there.

Of course, they may be under-promising and over-delivering. Here’s hoping that 4.6 is delivered in the next week or so, and U5 is shipped at Unite.

 

If your 'business' is one that is "making little or no money on games at the moment", I can quite safely say it isn't a very good business.
The comment was aimed at students, hobbyists and people just starting out on a pro license.
As such I think you missed the point.

 

I apologise if my post seemed a little 'insulting' (I honestly don't think it did) but its not fair for someone to criticise a particular method that a company is acting in, without a suggestion for a viable alternative. I was asking for what alternative he thought of best. I would be very surprised if any company with multiple-departments or multiple customer groups didn't use mailing lists to narrow down communication to select groups. However, if you feel that there is a better way to interact with specific groups of people, other than email, we are all ears.

These email lists are intended for particular participants for various reasons; Xbox mailing list for ID@Xbox participants, Sony mailing list for Sony Approved Developers, Alpha list for those that have signed NDA and help out with our Alpha builds, etc these lists goes on in many different forms.

Product Evangelist means many, many things. In the past, I have mostly focused on in-person interactions with our community and communication via Twitter and Emails. Since in recent times there have been comments that not enough Unity Employees are interacting on the forums, I have made an account and have begun to chip in to help out Aurore and UT to communicate more on here, hence the currently low post count.

 

Some things may come across wrong when written, so please be gentle when our staff is posting, we want to help whether we have 1 or 1000 posts.

 

So no price change? That's a pity. Being a mobile only developer I still don't see the reason to pay $1,500 for the PC version (which I don't need) plus(!) $1,500 for each platform. Make it $1,500 including all addons and I'm fine. Otherwise Epic will run circles around Unity sooner or later. ATM they're still behind in the mobile sector but this will change pretty fast.

 

I know that Unity is not planning any change to their pricing model, but I had an idea so I thought I'd share it.

What if Unity Pro was free and all profit <= $1500 that was made from using it would go to Unity?

That way developers in any of the "non-profit" groups (such as myself) would get access to pro, and if I (or anyone else in that group) would be lucky enough to get some revenue, it would go to Unity. If the revenue surpasses $1500, the developer would have effectively "bought" the pro license for the same cost as of today, but without having to put out the money in advance. All excess revenue would go to the developer (no 5%).

There would be no actual change for developers in any of the "profit" groups, except that the cost for using Unity would come at a later time. It would still be possible to account for the exact cost associated with using Unity.

Ofcourse this is a pretty naive idea since it could potentially make Unity lose money (I have no idea how many games make any revenue at all, and if so, how much they make etc) and it would mean Unity would have to wait for their ROI. But it is always good to think outside the box.

 

That's just a 100% royalty system for the first $1500, and they already said they're not doing royalties.

 

Maybe the way you create these list may be bias. You will only select developper on some criterias and so you will have opinions bias by those criterias. If you need a lot of money to enter such mailing list for the majority, of course people without a lot of money won't be heard.
Or if you invite only people agree with your developpement politics, you won't have fresh insight.
That's why a forum is probably a better choice to know people opinion (and better than a private mailing list).

I think a starting dev with little money are your futur, and even student etc... spend money on asset in the asset store and make the eco system viable. Of course they are not invited to your mailing list, so their opinion are not heard.
But if you loose too much of them, you will loose money on the long term. And I don't even speak about student that will be hire by a AAA studio. A big element when a AAA choose an engine, is if they can hire people knowing the tech. You have this advantage right now, and let's hope you won't loose it.

 

Is there some kind of Specs comparison between Unreal Engine 4 and Unity 5 I can see?

I just want to see if in the future it is better for me to learn Unreal Engine 4 or Unity 5, since my "project" will probably take a few years. (MMORPG)

 

This isn't that hard. If it's not open to everyone, then you can't use it as an example of how you are effectively communicating with customers. Again, I'm not asking them to reveal any company secrets, but having a closed network with a limited number of people seems incredibly counter productive.

EDIT: And considering that the UT employee also specifically stated: " Some possible solutions would be to convert the email list traffic into forum threads" means that the contents of a lot of these email lists aren't private. In fact, I'd be shocked if they were since the people discussing the issues have no idea who the other members of the email list are.

 

The person you quoted specifically said they couldn't find the email lists that was held up as an example of how you communicate. How about responding with information about how to get on those lists? That would have been much more productive.

As a developer, one thing I hate is when people propose solutions instead of bringing me problems. Because the solution is rarely thought though, but if they come to me with a problem I (or my team and I) can come up with an effective solution that will solve the problem for everyone (or as many people as possible). So I'm not really buying that a paying customer needs to give you a solution before you act, bringing you a problem should be good enough.

Also, on just a pure communicate front, your second email alone reveals much more information about these lists than all other emails combined, like listing specific criteria for joining them for example. So in reference to my previous paragraph, the problem is paying customers don't know that these communication channels exist. The next problem (based on your response) is that some of these communication channels have a high barrier to entry by requiring viewers to already be an accepted by ID@Xbox or be a Sony Approved Developer.

 

Unity free already have lot of people buying on the asset store, it's not only Unity that makes income , but Asset store. Unity from lot of years had always some big price for small indie people with not as much money to invest, and people buy it as the strong point has alawys been easy to use.
From responses i read pricing won't change.

It's called be successfull before beeing considered.
That's strange i asked about some problematic in UE4 forums , and i got some Epic employee response as he worked on that specific area. It seems you'll got more chances to have some response from some engineer within UE4 forums as they work differently and are not hermetic to forums like UT is on some topics.

 

Did I? Lets see now. I post a reply explaining how disappointed I am Unity's price won't change. Then I conclude with the quote you used. Unity does what it thinks best for their business and we shall do the same for ours, implying that if we think there is better value elsewhere, we'll be forced take our business there. How on earth did you connect this conclusion with my business being a failing one and invalidated my entire post as "missing the point", is completely beyond me. Maybe it was you that missed the point, don't you agree?

For the record, I respectfully disagree with bibinator on this "We have spent the past few months talking to MANY Unity developers from the largest studios to part-time hobbyists to figure out if we're falling short, and where. Of all the various people and types of studios that use Unity, there's only really one group that feels we're not offering them a compelling value proposition right now: those making little or no money on games at the moment such as students, hobbyists, and new pro developers just starting out or without any money. I believe it completely ignores countless posts made on the past 5 months by the community (most threads are now locked), including professional indie developers, on how ridiculous unity's pricing is in the wake of the new competition.

 

It seems good to me that UT are listening to their *paying* and their *big* customers first: hopefully they will come with a clean-cut Unity 5 worth its price and still mantain a powerful enough Free version.

We hobbyists / free-riders are the most vocal group here but we should acknowledge that decent games are worth nothing in mid 2014, everyone and their dog can mod a game nowadays and deploy. There is little money to make among so many hopefuls against customers that are more and more spoilt for quality.

So the real point is: hobbyists, please, stop dreaming, stop complaining, crunch your numbers and make your wallet do the choice: UT is a business, not a charity. I'm thankful for this 5-years bonanza here and ready to raise my level if UT raises their. Otherwise, will go to UE4, start learning again and deploy my little S***, same I did with Corona SDK in 2011 and Unity 4 last month.

 

And I appreciate that, but at the same time when staff post they need to be helpful as well, otherwise they might as well not post. I know that might seem like a Catch 22, but it's really not.

For example, rather than just saying that UT has a road map, it just hasn't been published yet, how about saying you will try and get information on when that road map will be published (or don't post at all and escalate to someone who can)? Having a concise list of what is being worked on for the rest if 4.X and into 5.0 is very important, and as a customer I don't want to have to go digging through blog posts to find it.

Another example, when posting about the email lists, explain how to get on them don't just throw them out there as example of how you communicate and leave it at that.

Personally I've been a Unity Free customer and I've spent $300 or so on Assets over the past years or so, so you've hardly made a lot of money off of me. But where this gets interesting is I've recently been asked to looking at creative ways to improve data visualizations at the company I work for, and what I've pitched them on means I would need to get myself and a small team onto Unity Pro. So now, I would be buying the full Unity Pro + the iOS module at the very least for multiple users.

Unlike a lot of people in this thread, I'm not all that worried about the costs of Unity Pro, but to me the communicate aspect is much more important. As a group, this is where you are lacking and Epic is knocking it out of the park. I get that until a few months ago, you guys didn't really have to have better communicate, but now you've suddenly got two new competitors in your space and now the status quo just isn't good enough anymore.

This is why true competition is good for the consumer.

 

Given your response, it is possible, though that is hardly my fault, as I still interpret your original post in the same way.

I apologise if I caused offence, it wasn't intended as such.

Your quoted piece in the original post referred to a group of developers that do not make money (students, hobbyists etc).
The end of your post suggested you have a problem with this terminology, also implying you have a business and you fit into the group referred to in the original post.

A group of developers that don't make money ≠ a business.

In any case, if you do believe that group covers you, then they have clearly just identified that you are a group unhappy with pricing, which means they already know that, hence you missing the point (no offence intended).

 

It's funny how you quote bibbinator but specifically leave out the next part where he talks about making these things public. That is the important part. Don't you think having highly detailed, specific threads that could be searchable online would be beneficial to all customers including those who are new paying customers who weren't on last weeks email list?

His point might have been that there are other methods of feedback, but if only an tiny percent of paying customers are included, it's not very representative. The best way to build software is by listening to all your customers.

 

No worries, lets move on, common written text misunderstandings, I hope I didn't offend you either

I think the indie business is not black and white, it's not like you either make or you don't make money. Many indies are in the gray area, not hugely succesful but making some money (I belong in this group). For us, I believe UE is a far better deal. I was certain that UT would eventually respond aggresively to UE's pricing and stuck around all these months waiting patiently and providing feedback as best as I could, but after bibinator's comment on pricing, I am for the first time checking out tutorials on UE.

 

The truth is, and this goes for Unity features as well, there is no clear cut date for when things will be out. Of course there is a grand master plan of features and whereabouts they will live but this changes often. Which is of course the argument for a public roadmap, these things take time, there are a lot of current projects in web development at the moment and we need to allocate time and people power. (For a fancy website thing that is)

There are complaints with if's and when's and complaints when we don't say anything. We chose to still tell you what we're working on regardless, even if we can't pin a time for that release. I made a list of the stuff in 5 when we announced it http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-5-is-coming-and-more.234931/ granted it's not the kind of list you are looking for, we try and get blog posts out about the details of these features as much as we can. (Actually the next one is about the new Audio Mixer which will be out today or tomorrow.)

(With regards to escalating bibbinator is VP Engineering, that's pretty escalated)

 

@Siddown

Well that's not Unitys fault is it? You're tied into an NDA and chances are development partners have a lot of influence on what you do and what Unity does as well.

@Aurore

I agree, there is no point jumping up and down on individual staff as these are company decisions. Unity had ease of use / platform reach and price on it's side, which is quite a powerful mixture. But as long as I can remember development (feature) cycles have been poor, communication has been slim and base line functionality has always been years behind competitors with PC / Console. There is only so long someone can wait for Unity to resolve these issues.

Point being it's a little hard to trust what Unity is going to do, official feedback threads are great. But we can't develop on potentials going by past history, we need to know what's going on. I still prefer Unity as an engine but Epic at the moment are by far the front runner even though it has it's fair share of issues right now.

Anger in some ways is a good thing, it shows people are still passionate about the product. As for me, I waited / hit frustration and now I'm apathetic towards the product. That's a real problem, I have no malice and the people who work at Unity are great. But I don't care what happens to Unity as a development tool..

@GiusCo

$4500.00 per seat for mobile users is still expensive, even if you do have a fair amount of financial backing. It's not the market I work in, so I wouldn't know if it's worth the fiscal risk or not.[/QUOTE]

 

I would hope for some more concrete answers then. From "we're in the process of making things public" to "maybe we should convert the emails to forums", these are things that should already be in place. I get that as the VP of Engineering, his number one priority are 4.6 and 5.0, but someone within the company should care about perception and the fact that some customers feel they are being left in the dark.

There is no downside from doing these things, and I get they take time, but they are also things that don't need to be done by the core team building the product.

 

No, but they heavily involve the core team, we need the information from somewhere.

 

Considering bibbinator specifically said that a solution to this problem is convert these lists to public forums, NDAs have nothing to do with it.

I'm a bit confused here, the VP of Engineering for UT states that they should make the email lists public by converting them to forums, and multiple paying customers have since posted making excuses why they can't. I don't understand that at all, why would you make excuses for the lack of communication? I would get it if bibbinator stated that due to NDAs they can't provide these details, that people would defend their position, but that hasn't happen here.

 

That's not the point, you HAVE to go to either Sony or MS to get a license to develop with Unity or Unreal etc.. You can't talk about specifics to any one else but other developers, so if you're not already a licensee what is the point in being on the console developers mailing list? More of a common sense thing, not a communication thing here!.

Now what happens to Unity as a whole, that's interesting. What are they doing in beta? What is being shipped with new features? You know the general stuff that helps everyone, not a small subset of console developers.

Everyone who wants to be should be on that mailing list.

 

Agreed, I know you need to get the info from somewhere. When I read that they are "in the process of making this public", I just assume that means they have something, right?

My issue is this, if head of engineering comes in and says "we're in the process of doing X" but doesn't give any expected delivery date, not even something vague like "it'll be out next quarter", or proposes possible solutions to problems, like converting email lists to forums again without a hint of a delivery date, I just assume those things will never happen. Maybe it's the cynic in me, but that's how I feel.

@ShadowK, I was just using those barriers to entries as examples. The number one barrier to entry appears to be that even if the list is Unity only there doesn't appear to have a way to sign up for them. As you said, anyone who wants to sign up for them should be able to, that or they should be replicated down to a forum so at least they are searchable.

 

@Siddown

Probably not the best example there , console development is dictated by Sony and Microsoft. Unity or Unreal feels to me like the bolt on in between.

But of course, if some people are getting general updates and other PAYING customers aren't. Then that's not acceptable, if Unity thinks about it this way. Who pays them more money? One AAA with 300 licences, or 10,000 single / small team developers?!

 

@Siddown This goes back to the if's and when's that we can't specify, but we'd rather say something than nothing at all.

 

I honestly get the Catch 22, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree about putting out something without any tangible details v. nothing.

I still think that if the number one priority is to get 4.6 and 5.0 shipped, then a detailed roadmap would be part of that equation, which means I'd hope it exists somewhere, and if it exist, publish it (slap a "subject to change" on it to CYA). Also, the person (or people) who'd work on a system to convert an email list to forums would not be on the team working on the 4.6 and 5.0 releases. Those are completely different skill sets.