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New products and prices coming soon

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by SaraCecilia, May 31, 2016.

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  1. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    I don't see why. But then I was actively developing when these things cost more than houses :D
     
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  2. nicktringali

    nicktringali

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    I think everyone eventually expected a price increase and switch to subscription only. That's the way the market was shifting and was just a matter of time. I think $35 and $125 are reasonable prices, but the benefits and services organized into those make them very unappealing, even without the context of the price increases coming from the previous schemes.

    I don't think everyone should have to have to make games or interactive experiences to sell them, they still have value and are worth making. So the argument 'make small stuff to afford our higher tiers to look professional' argument is disingenuous at best.
     
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  3. Devil_Inside

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    If you do the math, you'll see that ONLY users that have Subscription to more than 1 platform benefit from the new pricing.
    Users that had perpetual licenses to desktop+mobile are paying 1.3 - 2 times more, desktop, console and VR users are paying 5 times more.
    So no, it's not the majority. Far from it. According to the graph they posted, only like 9.5% of paying users have subscription. Everyone else is perpetual. How many of those 9.5% actually have mobile licenses? Could be 9%, could be 1%. So? 1% - 9% of current paying customers benefit from the new pricing. That's far from "majority".
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2016
  4. orb

    orb

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    That's not how I saw it when Adobe went from $3000+ for Creative Suite to fairly cheap monthly subscriptions. Instead of paying the formerly extortionate local price every other year to stay current, it's a small fee that would take years before it's up to the old price.
     
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  5. QFS

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    And that is exactly the reason why the market has been flooded with crapware.

    Zero risk and zero investment leads to flood of crap into a market. That flood then down-values everything else.

    (Just like a housing bubble, it will burst and send everything in the industry crashing down. It happened in the 80's and it will probably happen again)


    And the competition was incredibly low too.Because of that barrier.

    Things change.
     
  6. nicktringali

    nicktringali

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    This is true and a good point. I think circumstances here are different, with the engine already being free and what you paid for was different. I've been expecting a Unity price increase, but this is absurd
     
  7. Adam-Sowinski

    Adam-Sowinski

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    I will still develop with Unity, but now I know to protect my business I need to learn UE4 as well to be on a safe side. Who knows, maybe Unite 2017 we will see fantastic new pricing like Unity Pro with some unnecessary services for $250 / month. They've done it once; they'll do this again. Murphy's law.
     
  8. Farage

    Farage

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    Doing exactly the same - already installed and learning UE4 as we speak.
    Really sad that i have to do this after all this time
     
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  9. Teila

    Teila

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    The market is flooded with crapware becasuse the middlemen, Steam and Google and iTunes allow those games to be sold on their sites. They set the standard, not Unity.

    Unity is just a tool.

    So do you blame Maya LT (very inexpensive) and Photoshop (even less expensive) or Gimp (free) or Blender (free) for crappy stuff on Turbosquid and other 3d pay sites?

    I just discovered the fee to submit a game to Steam's Greenlight is $100. But after you pay that fee, you can submit as many games as you want, no limit. So people submit a game, it gets bad reviews, they make a change and resubmit it. Or they submit dozens of bad games in a short period of time.

    How crazy is this? This is not Unity's fault. This is Valve's fault. The $100 fee should be for EACH game. How many developers of bad games, knowing that there game will take some time to recoup that $100 fee, will pay for more than one game submission?

    I am really surprised that you guys blame Unity for crappy games. Every other engine out there as a free or almost free option and no barrier to making games. Unity is no different...other than the way it treats the splash screen...which I admit, only adds to their problem.

    There is no barrier anymore..not from any of the available indie engines. I suggest you go fight with the game distributors rather than with Unity. You might actually be able to make a difference.
     
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  10. NoUJoe

    NoUJoe

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    Hi Adobe

    Glad to hear you're here adobe-ing everything up. Subscriptions are clearly the way forward, everyone loves subscriptions, it's 100% confirmed. Do you want one more monthly outgoing on top of all your other outgoings? Of course you do! Do you like the thought of "owning" your products? Of course you don't! We live in a temporal world. However, if you're a more permanent kind of guy, feel at ease with our "you'll think you have a perpetual license but you've just bought a chunk of subscription-licence". We're just screwing another screw tight in the subscription train, choo choo.

    Go Adobe go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! xoxox
     
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  11. Devil_Inside

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    I have nothing against subscriptions per se. Unity is updating all the time so the boundary between major releases slowly fades away. But when you're forcing everyone to switch to subscriptions, price should go down, not up.
     
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  12. Teila

    Teila

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    I love Adobe's subscriptions. We have three PS users in my family, each with their own license of $10 a month. Wow! We could never afford to buy a perpetual license for each of us.
     
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  13. ZJP

    ZJP

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    Missing an "Desktop Only-Splash Screen Free-200k Limit" for $25-30/Mo.
     
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  14. 00christian00

    00christian00

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    If you have a need for 10 licenses, you have at least 10 people in your team.
    If your game which has been developed by at least 10 people in 36 months(that's the time you specified) doesn't make even 900K usd you have much bigger issues on your hand than the cost of Unity...
    Things like : you didn't make a penny and are actually deep in red.
     
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  15. Wild-Factor

    Wild-Factor

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    After buying the pro, they don't have money to buy noddles ? :)
     
  16. SprinkledSpooks

    SprinkledSpooks

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    We do need our noodles...
     
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  17. QFS

    QFS

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    Is Unity to blame for crapware, yes partially. But so is every game engine that is free or very cheap and very simple to use.

    Maya LT, Photoshop, Gimp, Blender, etc are not engines and do not make games. Those are simply tools used to make items that can be used for games. They cannot deploy an game fast or easily. Some of those tools require real effort and real time to make something useful. And yes the cheap and free tools do contribute to crapware on those types of sites as well.

    Unity on the other hand is a game engine and deploys games. With little to no effort someone can download something from the Asset Store and create crapware in a matter of minutes. No effort, no time invested.

    Prior to going free Unity Indie had a roughly a $210 barrier. Those who were serious about making a game and releasing a quality product put their money where their mouth was. Some failed, some didnt. But it was a large enough barrier to stop those who werent serious enough from even trying to. But I also think the Asset Store has been a major contributor to crapware. And not just Unity's asset store but every other asset store out there.

    So is it solely Unity's fault, of course not. Its the fault of the free-for-all market that wants to appease everyone, even those who arent serious and arent invested in the industry. This drags everything down with it. Leaving those who are serious and who want to put the time and energy into it left feeling like it almost isnt worth the effort anymore.
     
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  18. camel82106

    camel82106

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    ShadowK was making an realistic comparison for bigger teams. It's comparison with royalties. It doesn't matter if you are in red numbers or not. That comparison is still valid? Maybe I like constructive discussion....
     
  19. SprinkledSpooks

    SprinkledSpooks

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    Blaming Unity is like saying "guns kill people", rather than the shooter themselves. Sure, Unity is used to make crapware, but it's our responsibility as game developers to not create such garbage.

    I do, however, completely agree with you when you say that the free-for-all market makes it more easily to ship out crapware, and is partly to blame.
     
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  20. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Awesome point. It's not really Unity's fault. But I would argue it's not Valve's fault either as all these children spamming thumbs up to vote it in seem to want that garbage. But maybe they do have a responsibility.

    It's a market which is being driven to the bottom by gamers AND developers given free reign. "Just let us vote!" they cried. "Do away with curated content!" and the stores listened.

    The result? you let kids eat all the sweets and they vomit, and it's not pretty, least of all for responsible adults having to clean up the mess. So yes, we need tight stores more than ever, or we too, will have to invest in making 5 min shovelware experiences while AAA games get even more expensive.

    It might start with Unity but where it ends is just as important. Anyone should be allowed to learn to drive, but not be free to drive how they want. That would inconvenience other people, including people that are - yes - more important, such as delivery, public transport, emergency services and more.

    This analogy isn't so different in the game industry.
     
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  21. SprinkledSpooks

    SprinkledSpooks

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    But without Greenlight, where would be get our pervy anime games from?
     
  22. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    I guess I am out of touch, wasn't aware of pervy anime games. I guess there's a market for everything these days, and that includes shovelware. Problem is when that's allowed equal footing. It probably is allowed equal footing for as long as it makes the store more money. I don't think this will change unless developers change it.
     
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  23. ibyte

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    Sara, it would be good if Unity Plus added a small Unity logo to the product splash screen ( say bottom right ) vs taking over the entire screen. This still gives Unity "Product" placement but would give a more professional look to the product start up screen. Clive did say the point was to give a development team a place to take their product to a commercial market and I think this would go along way towards proving that.
     
  24. Teila

    Teila

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    What it sounds like you are saying is that making a game with any software should only be possible by the very serious, the very rich, the very accomplished.

    Essentially....AAA gaming companies. ;)

    I am older than dirt, maybe older than you. I remember when Indie gaming was new and exciting. I stumbled upon a writing job for a company back....15+ years ago. Suddenly, all those great niche ideas could come to life. People flocked to indie game communities in the 100's of thousands.

    Of course, many of those games never came to life. But some did. Those games started the new Indie Gaming industry. Many were made of ragtag teams of artists, designers, writers, programmers. It was so COOL! A very exciting time to be a developer.

    Many of my co-workers from back then now have small studios and are making successful games. The cool thing is that their games are different, artistic, unique, for niche audiences. I love it when they send me links and emails. It makes me feel all nice and warm inside.

    Now we are at a place where Indie developers want to gate the Indie industry. They want to stop "just anyone" from making a game. They want to place hardships and barriers so that only those who have the money and experience can make a game.

    What happened? I miss the old days. :(

    I still contend that it is not the engines that cause the flood to the market but the ease in distributing games. I disagree that it is the engine's responsibility to put up barriers to stop bad games. It is the market and distribution.

    One might even say it is not Steam and Google, but instead the fact that the market encourages Steam and Google to continue distributing bad games because someone is buying them.
     
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  25. Deleted User

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    Yeah, you sort of missed the point entirely there. In short, within that example it was specifying for us royalties don't matter until we profit millions of dollars. At that point we'd sort out a deal with the account managers at Epic to offset some of it anyway..

    It's not the cost of Unity that matters to me, the cost in man hours to develop tools etc. is the scary bit. So I'll always go with whatever engine has the most robust / rich featureset with the best support or access to support ourselves.

    In a smaller team it definatley would matter though, the market is getting tight and incomes are dropping so I can easily see why $125.00 a month atop of all your other art subscriptions etc. can start becoming a little alarming.

    @Teila

    Whoever's fault it is, not a lot we can do about it now.. We just have to make the best of an unfortunate situation and Unity is in a position to make that happen if they listen.
     
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  26. QFS

    QFS

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    No, but not every half-wit and moron should be making them either. Not everyone who wants to make games should be making them, just like how everyone who wants to be a doctor should be one.

    There should be a barrier, a hurdle, something to pass to make sure you are serious enough and skilled enough.

    Just take a look at the internet. When it first came out it was great. Only those who were serious about it and took the effort to learn about it, to learn about all the protocols and HTML coding, etc, made it great. Very little crap, things were there when you looked for them, etc. As the barrier for entry became lower and simpler, the level of crap increased.

    This is true in every industry and every market. The simpler and easier for the mass public to use or do the more crap you will find.
     
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  27. SprinkledSpooks

    SprinkledSpooks

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    Although the attention of the mass hoards of idiots with two weeks experience using a computer may be damaging the quality of the overall market, I still believe that if you are truly skilled and devoted, your game has a great chance to shine through all of the garbage out there.

    Hopefully, for those who really try to create games, the majority of gamers out there will recognize their effort and continue to purchase and support dedicated indie companies.
     
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  28. orb

    orb

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    You have been so lucky. I've stopped visiting Steam's front page because it suggests nothing but that and visual novels, never anything actually related to my collection.

    The visual novels in my recommendations always show "This was recommended for you because it's popular", so I guess it's selling well.
     
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  29. SprinkledSpooks

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    The only reason they're popular is because of creepy twitch streamers.

    And other um..."questionable" people.
     
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  30. Teila

    Teila

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    Okay, so who will determine if someone is a moron or a half-wit? You? Unity? Me?

    I am as frustrated as you are that bad games are flooding the market. I am really frustrated that as a Unity Personal User, I am one of those people who you think should not be making games. I should be behind the barrier, kicking and screaming to get in.

    The barrier should be that it is hard to make a game. And it is hard to make a game....at least one that is not a clone on mobile.

    Honestly, I see asset store developers putting everything in their assets. Basically, buy this asset. It has a demo you can use in your game. Push some buttons and the combat is done for you. Click a few and you have fully fledged terrain that is integrated with beautiful shaders and stuff to get you Greenlight-ed just because your scenery is beautiful! Drop this in and you have an FPS game, already done for you.

    Do we start blaming the asset store developers too? They save us a lot of time and make our games better, but are they making them to easy? ;) Shall we force them to create barriers?

    Really, we have to trust the consumers to tell a good game from a bad game. They are the ones who decide who is a half-wit and who is a moron....and whose games are worthy. You and I get little say in that.
     
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  31. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Then Unity has everyone covered though. But god forbid a splash screen might somehow prevent someone making repetitive motions over cartoons.
     
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  32. Shaolin-Dave

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    If they're still around. I think GarageGames went bankrupt in less than a year after screwing over the people who preordered Torque 2D and Torque 3D
    I agree. The video game crash of 1983 has caused by a flood of mediocre games. Nintendo's remedy was only allowing licensed games on the NES and limiting publishers to five games per year. Steam could learn a lot from the past, and we'd deal with a lot less "Digital Homicide"-type developers.

    How about this? Free version is only for non-commercial projects, Pro version (with more affordable perpetual option) is for commercial projects regardless of revenue. Splash screen is optional in all versions. For quality games, maybe Unity could work in perks for adding the splash screen as advertising? And for the love of God, stop putting the dark UI behind a paywall!.
     
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  33. 00christian00

    00christian00

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    @camel82106
    I understood the point and was pointing out the fact that if you are aiming to make 900K usd you won't even recover the cost of development and thus it was a wrong example which of course end in favor of Unreal.
    So you must expect to do at least double that and at that point the figures play much more in Unity advantage.
    I don't think they will drop much the 5% royalties for such amount and even if they did they will ask for an advance payment to give you the discount, and at that point it's same as Unity.

    I can't comment on the tech side, but I am sure Unreal too has lack of features you must compensate yourself as any engine.
     
  34. Teila

    Teila

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    Unfortunately, that is technology. I remember when only the wealthy and the intelligent had PCs. lol We have come a long way.

    I think the "get off my lawn" syndrome does not bode well for technology. :)
     
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  35. SprinkledSpooks

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    It is kind of scary that none of those "Visual Novels" have splash screens.

    Apparently they're making too much money for the kind of crap they shovel out.
     
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  36. Teila

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    I am so glad Unity will not listen to this. lol ;)
     
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  37. Ryiah

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    Adobe's and Autodesk's subscriptions are far cheaper long term than their perpetual licenses were. By the time you finally hit the break even point of a perpetual license you would have had their software for years. Not to mention by having a subscription you would be able to stay up-to-date over that time period whereas perpetual would have to pay to more for it.

    If Unity were to adopt a similar subscription style only a relative few would look back and care about the loss of perpetual.
     
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  38. Ryiah

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    Are you referring to eroge? Or are you referring to visual novels? One is porn and the other is not.

    Us poor people had Commodore 64s and were likely far better off for it. :p
     
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  39. SprinkledSpooks

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    I've only seen the one type, and let's just say it hasn't painted itself in a good light.
     
  40. Ryiah

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    You've most likely seen the eroge then. Visual novels are basically their equivalent to Choose Your Own Adventure.
     
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  41. orb

    orb

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    If Unity got a similar subscription price reduction vs. perpetual to Adobe's products I wouldn't even notice it, just like my monthly music streaming subscription.
     
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  42. orb

    orb

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    I've seen exactly one icky VN, the rest have been clean. But they make up for it in volume!
     
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  43. SprinkledSpooks

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    I feel as if, once a conversation reaches the subtopic of Visual Novels, that it has been talked to death.

    All there's left to do is wait and see if Unity really has listened to our feedback.

    Then we can complain about their next solution.
     
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  44. orb

    orb

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    The peasants have voiced their complaints and now sit angrily in the courtyard, waiting for the king's speech. Or something.

    That's the optimistic way of thinking :)
     
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  45. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Lets somehow rescue this thread in faint hope some good will come of it by not derailing (which I am guilty of but lets all try).
     
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  46. Deleted User

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    Well not really, you're right about one thing.. Staff costs alone doesn't cover it and you'd be talking about $2M just to break even, in which royalty counts come out to around $100K. Which is roughly double the base cost of Unity licences..

    But if you can't comment on the tech side, how can you really comment about the cost of development? For one it's extremely project specific, Unreal does cover most of the use case scenario tools.. If you're going to set out on a venture that requires staff amounts etc. you're going to obviously vet out what's missing and the amount of time it's going to require to create toolsets.

    For me the impact was so miminal it was hardly worth considering, more time has gone into tools / scripts for DCC's than anything we've done with UE.

    Every engine has it's pro's / con's but that's up to YOU to figure out.. Although it's not opinion that UE has a much deeper and feature rich toolset in which it would cost a lot more money to sort that out in Unity..
     
  47. Zwilnik

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    Good plan :)

    Ok, so what are people's suggestions/ideas for what UT could provide as part of the Pro package to make it worthwhile for smaller developers? Asset packs and otherwise free services aren't really much of a draw.

    My previous one of course has been making the first 'seat' effectively 2-4 seats and then you pay per seat once you're bigger than that.

    Visibility is the big issue nowadays for game developers with the mass of new titles out there. What about an Ad Bundle included each year per seat? So basically each Pro subscription comes with a set amount of advertising impressions/clicks on Unity Ads that you can use to promote your Unity games? (also helps promote Unity Ads amongst developers then).
     
  48. MoonbladeStudios

    MoonbladeStudios

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    well... 45$/month is higher that the license renewel (desktop only, every two ears)... that + unity splash screen means NO update. who will win for this? I will go free or switch engines...
    what is the purpose of this price?!
    you simply forgot perpetual license holders who own only a desktop version. which will most probably not give you money anymore... you really counted the costumers you will loose and the people you upset with this change?
    let me remind you: Unreal (less buggy, more features) FREE (+5% revenue), Cryengine (less buggy, more features) again FREE.... Unity ... (buggy + for a lot of features you need to look into the store) 1500E/year... see the problem?!
    sure unity has advantages over unreal and cryengine (that's why people are using it). but with this price difference you will not getting new costumers...
    I look at the kickstarter pretty often and guess what... 1-2-3 years ago 80% unity games... now.... 50%.... (sure it's an aproximation). but it should give you a LOT to think about! Hint: NOT price increase!
    PS: give people what THEY want and NOT what you think they want or what you want!
     
  49. SprinkledSpooks

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    I agree; this sounds like a reasonably solution, and could significantly lower the cost of game development for smaller teams, this making said teams more inclined to purchase a Pro license.
     
  50. Teila

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    I think you need to find solutions that are beneficial to Unity as well as to the users.

    2-4 seats for the price of one, is really not beneficial to Unity. I like it, but still..what do they get out of it? They lose revenue. I guess say it would encourage small teams to buy pro, which could help create better games, but then again, that is conjecture. Small teams fail and make bad games too.

    Ad bundle might be more useful but probably better in the Plus version as it might help developers reach the 100k limit faster and then be obligated to buy pro.
     
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