Platforms

Can Unity create content for other platforms other than computers? Such as home consoles or handheld systems.
Thanks

 

Nope, Sorry, but it does a damn fine job on mac/pc. You can use joystick or console controls via usb, I believe. Or try a midi keyboard(?anyone?).

AC

 

OTEE has hinted that they might port the player to XBox 360 one day. But that might not happen, and you shouldn't count on it at this point. Search the forums if you want their exact wording.

As you might expect a bunch of Unity dev were in favor of the idea, though there was some lobbying for other consoles instead.

 

I was hoping for DS and maybe even Wii in the future.

 

I think it's very important that the Unity folks not lose focus and go off implementing difficult features not needed by a lot of people. Yes all these things are nice, but first things first.

XBox 360 may yet prove a disaster since its production values drive up the cost of producing games but it does not offer a large customer base -- so you can pay 1.5-3x more to develop a game and reach an audience 5% the size of the PS2 market -- and supporting it now would mean shipping an XBox 360 game in what, eighteen months if you're lucky...?

If XBox 360 succeeds, and we knew Unity were going to support it *today* we might be able to hit the sweet spot of the 360 product cycle -- but that seems far-fetched.

Nintendo is notoriously difficult to develop for (not technically -- contractually). I'd love to target the DS or Wii but ... not bloody likely.

PS3/2* seems like the best option *commercially*, but programming for Sony's hardware is very very different from programming for anything else out there. (Wii and XBox 360 are, essentially, PCs with a CPU and a graphics card.)

* PS/2 is still outselling XBox 360, and Sony makes a profit on each one sold. No, I am no Sony fanboy.

I don't know if Unity is ultimately trying to become a tool for AAA game development (hey, anything's possible) or has a "let's try a little of everything and see what works" business model, but I suspect that if the "small, highly skilled team of indies" market is what they're after (i.e. folks like the people who developed "Tomb Raider" or "DOOM"), they need to think in terms of ignored nooks and crannies rather than highly competitive areas ... high quality "edutainment" software (Serious Software), mac gamers, folks who play solitaire at work, games for phones, children's games, etc. The kind of market that Adobe/Macromedia has essentially abandoned (Director/Authorware) or never quite managed to ship (Atmosphere).

 

My clock radio should also have a Unity plug-in pre-installed so when the alarm goes off in the morning I can play a quick game to wake myself up :wink:

Seriously, I do hope all these formats happen in the future (how awesome would it be for Unity developers to be able to create indy/casual games for all the new "LIVE" components offered on the 3 next gen consoles), but I don't see it happening in the near future. Licensing costs and the mind boggling amount of programming it would take might get in the way.

 

I feel that Nintendo's Virtual Console on Wii would work well with Unity since you wouldn't have to produce games on discs and what not.