My email to Unity (about pricing)

Well then design your game to work with what you have. That's a design problem, you wouldn't make a tron glow game without unity pro

 

If it were as simple as a design flaw, then nobody would purchase Unity Pro.

 

Still the same. They would be discounting sales they already have. There are people purchasing now who are hobbyists and certainly those who aren't at those revenue levels, probably many. And as Angrypenguin pointed out, that would be additional overhead for the company.

Or put it another way, they would increasing costs, cutting into existing sales to provide tools for people who are incapable solving their own development and business/financial challenges. Not much of an upside.

 

Though it could be to their disadvantage, it could also be to their advantage. Without a statement from Unity we'll never know one way or the other. So at best we can only speculate, offer suggestions, and claim those who are unable to fit their project into Unity Free are somehow making poor design decisions.

 

if you just need to use the profiling feature, maybe you can use the trial license

 

UE4 is not vaporware. I have it installed on my computer. Vaporware is something announced but not released. For example, the new Unity GUI (coming soon in 4.6) is a fantastic example of vaporware. But UE4 is exactly the opposite of vaporware, because UE4 was made available the moment it was announced. Even if it was not perfect when it was announced, it was made available right away and that means it cannot be called vaporware.

Copied from Wiki:
"Vaporware is a term in the computer industry that describes a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually released nor officially cancelled."

 

I am a hobbyist and was planning to buy Unity Pro this year. I already had the money set aside for Unity Pro. But once Epic announced UE4 for $19/month, I decided to subscribe to UE4 and wait until Unity adjusted their price before buying Unity Pro. Prior to the UE4 announcement, hobbyists like myself did pay for Unity Pro. Since the UE4 announcement, I imagine those hobbyist sales of Unity Pro have dried up. Unity will need to match Epic's price to get hobbyists like myself to pay for Unity Pro at this point. What I am saying is Epic already cut into Unity's sales.

UE4 has gotten better each month, and I have gotten more comfortable with it each month. I am still more comfortable with Unity, but that will change as a function of time. At some point, all of us hobbyists will stop begging Unity to accept our money, and we will simply be gone from the Unity community. Unity needs to do something regarding price before that happens. For now, I'll continue to split my free time between Unity and UE4. If Unity wants some money from me, they can announce their new pricing.

 

I hadn't heard about how UE4's mobile support is.

I will say that Unity's Android and IOS build functionality (for what I've done) has been seamless. Tablets, Phones, IOS and Android - haven't had a single build or deployment issue yet!!

I guess when I think about it - Unity HAS made money off of me I have bought several hundred dollars worth of assets from the asset store (some of which was offset for me by sale of my own assets).

Back to UE4 - I did pop for the license a few weeks back -
It stresses my 2013 macbook pro (SSD) to the limits. I'm afraid the fan is running so hard that it will lift off the desk!! Rarely a noise from it when building with or using Unity.

 

They finally got around to fixing that in 4.3. The editor scales itself down a lot better now to the point where a few people are running it on the macbook air.

 

If he need more time to debug the game after the trial period, what should he do?

 

Buy Unity Pro

 

There's a profiler in the asset store for a few bucks that works in the free version too.

 

Which sounds like a strange suggestion from my end. I would have thought using a trial copy of Unity Pro to make or improve a game that you intended to sell wouldn't be allowed.

If Unity will not compete in pricing, they need to compete in quality and features. Unity 5 has some nice options, but UE4's improvements are coming in leaps and bounds. A quick glance at the Unity 5 features page shows a nice set of improvements, but UE4 already has a few of them (namely 64-bit editor, physical-based shaders, and SpeedTree).

Aside from sporting expensive middle-ware out of the box, such as Enlighten, UE4 could potentially be at Unity 5's level by the time UT finally releases it. At which point a price change may suddenly look very tempting to a lot of people. Even those who are more than hobbyist.

 

it's not allowed to use trial version to compile the final product, but i am not sure if we only use the profiler...

 

Have you tried this: Benchy Profiler? (Saw it in the What are your "must have" Asset Store assets? a week ago)