Major Annoucements from John Riccitiello Unity CEO March 3rd GDC2015

The funniest part is that it's "Under Review" process

 

The days seem to be dragging on - anyone else counting down the days until March 3rd, or is that just me? I do hope I haven't set my expectations too high

 

My predictions - Goat support is going to be confirmed and John will bring ideas that made EA lots of money, the play button will now be a DLC addition.

 

Not necessarily counting the days, but I have been visiting the beta page daily to see if they released yet.

 

In the last year game engines market has changed very much but not Unity, in this moment any annoucement is very late.

 

Not sure if troll because of your avatar, but Unity has changed a lot for the better, in the past year. More Blogs, More Videos, More Events, More Patch Releases, More Alpha Testing, More beta Testing, More Workshops, More Trainings, More Talking to Community, More Everything! Is there something we haven't done which we could do more of?

 

by reading the forums daily, the answer to that probably is:
More more! (more stability, more faster, more than the other, more performance and more now (or yesterday preferably) : )

 

Looks as you only read the "good" threads.

 

Ok, we will aim to do more of 'More more' in the future. In fact, there are a ton of new performance optimisations (Physics for example) in 5.0 so our R&D team are already More Moreing.

 

Mor..ning.

No, never. Unity rules.

 

Fish will be available on thursdays instead of fridays in the Unity canteen.

 

Leaked and on the BBC news.

 

That's a nice shape; someone should use it as a logo or something

 

Isn't that the opposite direction of Unity? Isn't unity coming together? What masonic horror is this...?

 

You could view it as Unity constantly improving their product in all directions... or they simply couldn't come up with anything aside from a colorless transform gizmo.

 

to infinity and beyond?

 

Now I'm confused. I always thought that is box. Never saw those arrows until now.

 

Oh wow...yeah, I always thought it was a box.

 

Me too! I guess the total number of people on earth who now correctly see this as arrows and not a box has just quintupled thanks to this thread.

 

In the meantime, 'John Riccitiello Joins Telltale Games' Board of Directors'

 

Yes

 

Oh NO! You spoiled the surprise! John was gonna announce just that. It was a secret. No one knew it. Including himself I guess (he just had that intuitive feeling that something really really really big was gonna come up).

So some people might wonder why that would be a big announcement. Can't you see it? The implications are rather significant: Up until now, people were thinking UT's logo was just a stylized 3d-box. Which is kind of obvious for a game engine. And kind of boring.

But - three arrows diverging from a point. OMG! It's the Kalachakra, the spokes of time itself (creation, existence, destruction ... and ... well, no one really talks much about the fourth which is infinite potential but let's not get too serious here now ;-) ). DIVERGING FROM A POINT! So this means: It's the start of the New Age. Which of course, will be the next Golden Age. It means that Unity will spread according to the implicit order of time and space all over the Universe.

And I kept on saying Unity FTW!!!

Finally it really happens. Celebration time!!!

Do you remember when Neo was fighting Agent Smith in the last part of the Matrix Trilogy? He gave up ... everything went dark ... but then, from the inside out light exploded and put the whole Matrix all back into order. Darkness was defeated.

That's the meaning of this logo.

That's big news indeed!​

Oh well, as Richard already spoiled half the surprise I guess I can do the rest. Obviously, the arrows cannot be black with that new meaning. That would be a rather dark meaning, I guess.

So ... here's the new Unity Logo:

​

Three white arrows pointing into all directions, implicating the beginning of a new Golden Age, a truly Universal One this time. Just in time for when the human species goes galactic ... and ... um ... Holographic (so I guess that HoloLens thingee will also be included as a minor addition to the announcement ... if there's still time ... maybe ;-) ).

I really had no idea it was gonna be that big. Until a few moments ago. Nothing will ever be the same again.

So now, everyone let's get back to work. You didn't see anything here.

​

 

What the heck?!?!!? I never noticed it was 3 arrows pointing out! Scratches head.
Gigi

 

It's the move tool, lol

 

A Microsoft acquisition seems a little unlikely. One of the biggest strengths of Unity is still it's cross-platform reach. This has only expanded over the past few years, and Unity is now one of the premier engines for cross-platform work. For development, Microsoft has always been about limiting development to their own platforms. While they've begun branching out a bit with some of their own software offerings, they are still all about controlling and managing their own platforms. While a development tool like Unity is good for encouraging development, it isn't solely targeted at Microsoft's domain. A full-on acquisition would be to limit Unity's reach, not take advantage of it. And with the current engine market, it would be a bit of a waste. Most of the major and minor engines are moving in the multi-platform direction, due in no small part to the explosion in smart-phone and tablet sales.

A Microsoft partnership seems much more likely. I seem to recall that something like that already happened when Microsoft announced their XBox One publishing initiative. A similar deal for Unity 5 seems like a logical next step. Anything Microsoft can do to bolster development for their platforms is in their best interest. With the growing Unity development scene, this sort of move makes sense.

A subscription-based license for the Pro version also seems like a possibility. It will be interesting to see if that shakes out at all. I have no idea how well Unreal's subscription license has been working for them, I hope we hear more about that during GDC.

If there was going to be an acquisition, I would expect it to come from Facebook. They have pretty deep pockets, and a cross-platform engine would be a feather in their cap. Especially since Unity is commonly used in conjunction with Occulus Rift development. I have no idea how such an acquisition would effect Unity, though.

 

Maybe he means a different proposition. The landscape now compared to a couple of years ago is quite different.

 

Oh hey yeah! Well, scratch that one off the list then. I'll have to go a little farther afield for some of these predictions.

Unity announces that they are being bought, by Google.

Unity announces that they are being bought, by Amazon.

Unity announces that they are developing their own independent hardware platform for games. (think OUYA or Fire TV micro-console) Published games will be distributed over an on-line interface extended from the Unity Asset Store.

Unity announces that they are starting their own publishing branch/incubator, where they will provide publishing services to indie developers who use the Unity engine.

Unity announces a social-network style extension to the Asset Store to improve discover-ability of games being developed using the Unity engine.

Unity announces a new system to be integrated into Unity 5 that will make it much easier to develop and distribute tool bundles targeted at developing specific game types.

 

Unity announces the fabled make game button. It's real.

 

If the forums are anything to go by, a [Make MMORPG] button would be a big hit - but only if it's a nice big friendly button.

 

Unity Pro will be completely free, with Ad support.

Here is a leaked screenshot

 

HAHAHHAHA, well... if it's free...

 

Im going to break the news a few days early (I will probably get in trouble for this):

Unity is acquiring every single other company ever. Including Apple.

 

Epic too?

 

Which would make them Unity Games. They even have a domain name ready for it!

www.unitygames.com

 

Pure sleuthing. Good catch.

 

Now seriously:

I really hope that the "major announcements" aren't just "Here we go. Unity 5 is out...". That would be a major bummer...

 

Well, we have bought every company, including TenCent who own about half of Epic Games.

(I hope no-one takes my post seriously. Come on now... EVERY company ever?)

 

On that Unity Games site it's written

So this is similar to the dev grants from Epic? If so, why is this barely highlighted anywhere? I never read about that before.
I knew they help devs to distribute and market their games. Particularly on not so accessible platforms. But that they fund games development was new to me.

 

I believe it is more of a publisher-developer relationship rather than Epic who simply gives away the cash with no real strings attached.

 

Yes maybe you're right.
But let's be honest Epic are no samaritans either. I'm pretty sure they will grant that money only to projects that look promising. So that they get their 5% gross revenue share and not to everyone who opens his hands.

But that's a bit off-topic. (Too bad they closed the thread where this kind of stuff was discussed)

 

Yeah, Unity Games is less of "LOL, have some free money or whatever" and more of "Lets go into a friendship and make great games together and we will publish them!" (http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/09/20/announcing-unity-games-publishing/). It currently has more of a focus on publishing in Asia as thats a market thats it notoriously more difficult to break into; recently they have published the gorgeous-looking Teslagrad in the east! http://www.unity-games.jp/games/teslagrad/


And in the past Unity Games has published games such as The Last Tinker (Which is probably the most colorful game I have ever experienced)