Major Annoucements from John Riccitiello Unity CEO March 3rd GDC2015

People that already purchased it should never be a problem with price policy changes - you could just give them asset store vouchers to pay up the difference, or pay back, etc.

 

Not only the people who have paid. AssetStore vendors got also keys for the Beta Pro version, to make their assets ready for Unity 5. Even if they don't own Unity Pro. It's supposed to last until Unity 5 is officially announced.

 

I don't know about the people who have paid, but asset store developers don't have any special info that gives us any hint as to what will be in Unity 5 free. At least not that I'm aware of. So I'm not sure where the developer quoted is getting their information about how many features of 4 pro will be in 5 free.

 

Find out on Tuesday.

 

I think there are many options for a major announcnment:

1. Acquisition by Valve and the engine-name will be renamed to "Source 2 Engine"
2. Unity 4 will completely free, while Unity 5 will have Free- AND Pro-Version.
3. Unity 5 will really be completely free.
4. Partnership (NOT Acquisition!!!) with Microsoft
5. Developing and publishing Games theirself.

 

This is interesting. My guess is also along the lines of a pricing policy change. I suspect Asset store income is at the point where it is becoming a good portion of their intake. The multiple versions of Unity IS harming the Asset Store at least indirectly and even directly in some cases.

Honestly given that you can already get pro for free, by signing up month after month with a different user name. And the fact that asset store accounts aren't forcibly tied to unity license accounts. It really makes sense to release pro for free indies in a super low income bracket (IE your company makes < 10K a year). This bracket was probably already (with a few honest exceptions I am sure) getting unity pro for free anyway.

I am sure there are people that make no money with unity and paid for Unity 5. But I don't think that is a reason to not make the change. Dealing with that cross-section should be pretty easy (like mentioned before asset store vouchers or some other incentive).

The fact that no one has any idea which features are in pro versus free and unity 5 is already in release candidate territory, kind of supports this idea also.

 

Except the opposite has been stated multiple times. Which does makes sense. You'd have to sell a lot of assets for that 30% cut to add up to even a single copy of Unity Pro let alone enough to afford ~300 employees and all other expenses.

If someone is going to go to this trouble, why wouldn't they simply pirate a copy of Unity Pro? I know I would treat it as such.

It definitely supports the theory that Unity's announcement may affect the existence of Unity Free, but I simply cannot imagine the asset store ever becoming a major source of income. Exceptions aside, asset quality is simply not that great.

 

I said a "good portion" and "suspect" to precisely avoid making fully commited statements about subjects to which I don't have precise data to make precise statements about . The point isn't that assets store now makes enough to cover expenses to make unity completely free. It was more along the lines of the asset store might make enough to cover expenses for that cross-section of unity users that use unity but never make any money but yet still buy unity pro (that is the income that would eliminated in the completely theoretical license change that I suggested above).

 

Right, but I thought I'd throw it out there. I do think something is likely happening to Unity Free as otherwise we really should have known the features that would have been included by now. Especially as there were potential upgrade customers who flat out skipped the upgrade discount for Unity 5 (I recall at least one dedicated thread).

 

But with UT4, you need Pro version to make assets specific for Unity Pro.
Why Asset Store users are considered Pro if they don't own a Pro license ?
I mean i should just sell some bunch of good assets to win money and receive a Free UT5 Pro version

This means it won't be no more Pro version and a totally new pricing system.

 

It is a temporary license though. Intended solely for updating their assets to Unity 5 prior to it shipping.

 

Yeah, it goes away when 5 is released, which is why I don't care if they take their sweet time getting it out. I wanna play with the pro features and I haven't had much time to do so!

 

At what time, will Unity will make the annoucement?

 

He (Wasteland2 guy) indicates that the new Free will allow modding with new tools that will not cost thousands of dollars for Pro so it does seem some of the 4.x pro features might move to 5.0 free. Not a bad thing. I love the idea of giving modders more access. That can only help.

 

Or alternatively there may simply be a Unity Pro for modders that only works on existing games?

 

Maybe...but that article is all over the internet. Tough to read between the lines. Even a modding tool would be cool although not as universally useful as a few 4.x tools in Free. Either way, I will own Unity Pro soon! Can't wait. My trial ran out yesterday. lol Waiting for payday.

 

There's nothing in Unity that stops them getting a good frame rate. If somebody is going to program badly, the engine won't prevent it.

--Eric

 

Will the whole dev day be twitched or streamed?

 

The Announcement Session on the 3rd will be live-streamed (Like Unite is every year).

The GDC Dev Day is usually recorded then put in the GDC Video Vaults.

 

URL? please.

 

The URL for the stream doesn't exist yet (Its taking place in 3 days!) but it'll probably be shared on social media/everywhere when it exists.

 

This means Pro features for everyone in UT5 and new pricing.
Because with a temporary license, when it expires and you need to make new changes to your asset and you need Pro , how do you do ?
I think they got that temporary license, knowing with new announcements, they won't need it and will have access to Pro features in the new UT5 pricing system for every one.

 

I don't think it means that. I think it just means that when they sent it they either didn't want to bother checking which license every developer had, or they hadn't finalized the free version yet. If I know that my access to the pro version is limited, why would I add pro only features to one of my assets?

 

The keys were sent to asset authors so they can test compatibility and prepare their assets to work with Unity 5 by the time it will be launched. It has nothing to do with pro version other than that the free version does not exists during pre-release phase so they gave same version as others had.

 

http://i.imgur.com/vYvPCRB.png

Although you can hope Everyone's excited for lots more free stuff. If that's the case we'll find out on Tues.

 

I was just guessing.
And i stopped asking what will be announced , since UT5 is not totally finished and because i use Unreal 4 for a big project idea where i need all features and tools.
Unity 4.6 feets all my needs today for 2D and 3D projects not using PBR.

 

Touch input in the editor... please!

 

Oh! Oh! Oh!
One last guess: Unity console.

 

My last wild and very unlikely guess: Unity will come bundled with Windows 10, and you get free Pro on a project if you release a Window Phone version.

 

In b4 Unity buy out /Sarcasm

With the recent announcements of Unreal going free I am guessing that unity is following suit.

 

With all the talking about Unreal's 5% revenue cut vs Unity's up-front payment I just got an idea:

Unity to announce smaller than 30% revenue cut when publishing Unity games on Origin?

 

It wouldn't be a bad idea for them to bundle development tools with their OS. That's exactly how I ended up getting into software development myself. I had MS-DOS and it came with QBASIC (aka QuickBASIC sans the compiler/debugger).

 

So it's the third of march in the more civilised parts of the world.

Any news?

 

I'm on a more European sleep schedule while living in the US (read: I'm a no life gamer/developer). Do I count too?

 

I said civilised. Europes still got a couple of hours .

 

I'm super excited for tomorrow's news.

I hope it's a price drop.

 

Given UE4 drop to zero for initial buy-in, I am sticking with this prediction. It completes in the market, it doesn't drop their bread and butter money making licenses, it encourages a thriving asset store by making the free users first class citizens again and clearing up the major pain with multiple version feature support (free vs pro). As a bonus it ends every begging for pro feature thread and every community divisive "entitlement" complaint response.

Its a win all the way around for them.

 

In past times (yesterday) this post would be deleted.

 

Hmm how about a Unity/valve based game console with game publishing thrown in?

 

mono 2.6 garbage collector kicks in and your car flies off a bridge.

 

I missed whatever censorship drama happened on the forums in the last few days but I've seen a lot of hints of it.

It's not a good sign.

To me, that implies maintaining the status quo in the run up to announcing an acquisition. I hope that's not the case. Or if it is, I hope Unity doesn't end up like Torque. The sense I got from what happened to GG is that the founders wanted to cash out and they found a buyer with deep pockets but little understanding of the game engine market.

There would be a lot of potential upside if Microsoft bought Unity, but then again they might screw it up like they did with Danger and Rare.

I'm 11 months into a Pro + iOS + Android subscription so I'm not expecting anything for free (and I'm a Libertarian, so I already know that I'm entitled to nothing). But a price reduction would be nice. With currency conversion, I've been paying close to $300 CAD the last few months.

 

You've seen what now? I don't recall ever seeing anything get deleted, even a few things I really thought ought to have got deleted. Lots of things getting locked, but not deleted or otherwise "censored".

 

They do a good job *puts on foil hat*

 

My final guess.
UT gives $1500 to every user who uses Unity5. And they call it the "Unity Dev Grants".

 

I highly doubt Unity would move to a royalty based model, that puts them squarely in the ring with UE4. A fight that they wouldn't have much hope of winning imo. Most people haven't done the math on it, but Unity's licensing costs are still a much better value for a small game developer if you intend to sell your product and make money- even considering that UE4 is now "free". If my company has to pay a royalty, I'm going to go with the better engine. This is subjective, obviously- and possibly inflamatory, but there's no denying the Unreal Engine pedigree. Unity is getting there, but it's not ready to jump in the ring with Epic yet.

I actually prefer the Unity workflow, can't stand that UE4's programming options are essentially playmaker or C++, and the unity asset store is very robust at this point, but UE4 is growing at a very rapid pace. Just look at where it was a year ago. Unity isn't innovating fast enough to jump in the ring with Epic and compete 1-to-1 in my opinion- just takes a glance at the latest UE4 patch notes to see that.

In my opinion, UE4 and Unity are not competitors- they fill different needs, so there's no need for one to mimic the other's business strategies.

Either way, we'll see tomorrow morning. It's an exciting time to be in the industry, lots of competition and really cool tech coming out. In the end we all win!

My own personal prediction: Unity will release their own brand new VR device to add to the pile of other VR devices that aren't out yet! (god i hope not, I'm already getting tired of VR and they're not even widely available yet).

 

I haven't seen any deletes myself, just a bunch of comments from others saying that posts have been deleted.

 

The moderators tend to let us know in threads where posts have been deleted.

Last year threads about UE pricing got locked nearly as quickly as they started, and they didn't leave any open. Now there's an active thread elsewhere specifically for it, which seems to have the blessings of UT employees.

 

There hasn't been any "censorship drama". Occasionally people seem to forget the forum rules and need a reminder, but no more so lately than any other time, and the worst that happens is that a thread gets locked.

That's a strange conclusion, and untrue. Honestly I have no idea why people are so obsessed with Unity getting acquired.

Can't think of any. Some for any other company for that matter.

--Eric

 

Because they seem to believe that an acquisition is automatically a good thing.