Should UT plan to drop $600 upgrade to Unity 5 Pro?

Considering the storm in the last 24 hours I am hoping this will happen.

Do you think this is a good idea?

 

No. That would be a knee-jerk reaction.

 

Is this not a decisive and strategic reaction to keep their user base?

 

You should be a tabloid journalist with sensationalist headlines like that.

 

Personally I'd much prefer the $600 upgrade and no royalties than if they changed it to $19/month + 5% royalties. I think they should offer a choice. Of course it's not a thing they can easily do at the drop of a hat; setting up a team to handle tracking and litigating the collection of royalties from hundreds of random people is going to require a lot of lawyers, and like I mentioned in another thread, they have already sacrificed most of their lawyers on the bloody altar of the dark god Xamarin, so I don't know if they have enough lawyers left to start a royalty collection team just yet.

 

Nope. They need to react somehow to the recent moves by the competition, but I don't think what you're proposing is it.

 

I'd think UT would be concerned with how their engine price looks to newcomers, rather than only appeasing their current pro users with perpetual licenses. If they do mean to respond, I'd think their plan would be more all-encompassing than that.

 

I think they need to drop the $600 to keep fans close.

I, for one, who was about to pay for my U5 upgrade, am now looking at U4 and CryEngine as an alternative - and they are looking great! Well, they always looked great by were unapproachable given their costs. But now I have actually downloaded them and learning. Big difference.

At the moment it is sorta like looking back at a mother who has reared me through my formative years, to see if she still wants me to stay or not.

 

It's 100% free, not sure why we'd be concerned about that?

 

Thanks!

 

It is free but also splits the community to those who have pro and those who don't. For instance it limits people that want to collaborate with different licensing. Also there is tons of assets serving just people without pro. Not to mention the tutorials that are made that cater only to pro. Hardly democratizing game development,
spread of knowledge among common people, in contrast to knowledge being controlled by elite groups.

 

you should add a '?' to your title. It's missleading.
I personally take it like forum spam...

 

Touché. Why would Unity even care about this Unreal-so-called-Engine upstart, I'm sure it doesn't even show up on their radar.

I mean, if all you want is to make the next Tappy Chicken, I guess it'd be OK, but for any real professional work you'd need something like Unity anyway.

 

Clearly you are a troll.


I'll just say this...UE4/CryEngine3 have the essential of TerrainEngine(the voxel one the guy sells on here for $3500) built in...game over.

 

There one is practically free. Just cost of a good pizza. So free version of unity is now compared to the full versions of the other engines.

 

A knee jerk reaction would be a mistake. Clearly Unity are not reacting to UE but UE reacting to Unity. @Steego - Unity and UE are 2 different engines. Unity is not AAA but what it does it does better than anything, and AAA is pretty much useless on most of the platforms indies can earn money on. If UE is so great now why haven't you tried to make a game previously with UDK as that was free. Always amazes me the people that rant about AAA engines. It is what it is. Point me to the thousands of great games made by indies i.e. one man developers, that were made with UDK? Or even small teams and not companies with a lot of financial resources. Then explain to me where you are guaranteed a marketplace to sell these games. Then go and throw $20 a month for 2 years at Epic and come back with your AAA version of Tappy Chicken, because oyu sure as hell won't have the money to come back with your version of Assassin's Creed.

 

tell me you're kidding...

Unreal Engine 4 with full C++ source code you want for USD$600???

 

The free version is practically useless, without profiler, custom splash screen and plug in support , you can't create anything useful with it, its more like a demo version than a free version. especially when you consider what you get with Unreal for only 19$ (the whole engine with the source code...forever)

 

you mean Epigenesis, the ball, Dungeon Defenders, strike vector don't exist. Red orchestra which lead to killing floor and red orchestra 2...

 

300$ upgrade + 50% discount on mo subscription will fix everything.

 

Subscriptions are discounted (for the first year) if you own a perpetual license. 30 euros/mo per license (Pro, add-ons) instead of 57. You don't have to upgrade to qualify.

 

None of these projects was done with UDK. DD started with UDK but switched to full UE long ago.

UEs problem is platforms and same is for Crytek. They are great if you want to go to steam I guess, but thats where it ends.
UE has iOS as only 'tested' platform aside of windows and Cry not even that ...
The rest is best wishes, webgl and console platforms are all excluded from these deals.

One should probably read whats included before starting to compare cause none of these can target winstore, winphone 8, web, linux (ok cry plans to but we shall see how bad the performance will be) or osx and neither has a long term proofen android support and a barely well enough proofen iOS support.

Sure there are perhaps a few developers looking for exactly that, that will favor these technologies over Unity. But the rest that want to reach all relevant platforms simply can't choose them becuase they can't go with these techs where they want and need to go.

 

webgl not included in the 19$ +5% deal?

 

Not really, that still would be a higher price than their competition. And their competition is offering far more features.

 

You realize that Unreal engine 4 is out for 20 bucks right? So my point isn't that these games were made with UDK, which they were starting out, it is that you can make awesome indie games with Unreal engine 4.

 

i know that but for people who do not want to learn another engine a 50% discount could sound like a good deal.

 

I hope they keep the same pricing, in 6 months when people shift to Unity because its easier and has similar quality I think it will be a little clearer what the value is.

 

The learning curve for it is small. Its very similar to Unity in many ways, I'd say in two weeks you'll know everything you need to proceed successfully. And two weeks is peanuts. UE4's visual scripting alone, Blueprint, is so much better and more user friendly compared to Playmaker, its mind boggling .... and that alone will cut down the need to fully delve into C++ if you dont want to.

 

That's not true at all. I've created a deep game, purchased many tools from the asset store, and have it running and distributed on mobile platforms, all using the free version of Unity.

I don't get where this sort of 'Unity Pro is the only real option' attitude comes from. Perhaps these people got it into their head that they 'must' have Pro, perhaps they have never actually tried using Basic and went directly to Pro, but the free version of Unity is an incredibly featured engine in its own right; especially now that iOS and Android add-ons are free; and many of the remainder Pro features have solutions on Basic (E.g., Batching Tools on the asset store adds static batching and exceeds performance of Pro batching; iOS has a built-in profiler; and there are free solutions to image effects). A splash screen is such a fair and such a low price to pay for all that.

My team intends to upgrade to Pro now, as we'll soon be in the financial position where our iOS game (fully made on Basic) makes it worthwhile. But ultimately, the free version is aimed at those making under $100,000 p/year. If you're creating projects that are making far below that amount, and then you're shelling out for Unity Pro and complaining about the cost, I think you've made a mistake by not starting off with Basic.

 

Yeah, but only if you need terrain for your game sure. Not all games need terrain.

 

+1 maybe a mod can step in here and rephrase it in the form of a question, this is just a ridiculous way to title this thread.

 

As a matter of fact, the $600 upgrade price for 4.0 owners is noted as a limited offer on the pricing page. So technically the title is true, even though the context of the thread is not.

 

I'm happy with what Unity Technologies is doing right now. You really can't get much better than free, and if you think you really really can't survive without the pro features then you are probably making enough money off of your games to afford the measly price tag as it is.

 

I'm talking about Unity, not UE4. Reset seems to want Unity to switch to a royalty model. Or just give away everything for free which is ludicrous.

 

Ludicrous if you asked a week ago, before Epic changed the face of game engine pricing.

Now, its absolutely not ludicrous. In fact not adapting or being stubborn will just sink Unity into the abyss.

 

I was thinking this all this morning

I got to ask just one thing though: is it possible the splash screen art for Unity games be changed? Not by us, but by you. Unreal splash screen is badass, a gamer sees it and even if they never played an Unreal game before, they will feel "hell yea!". Unity's splash screen logo... is dull. After seeing it enough times people just think "another cheapo dev that didnt bother paying for the tools."

Unity needs one thing more than anything, ant it is a splash screen that makes players feel "Hell Yea!!!"

 

Actually splash screens make my ESC key cower in fear. :twisted:

Edit: But yes, a nicer splash screen would be nice. What would be really nice is some badass PRO only splash screen.

 

It's still ludicrous. Unity would go bankrupt pretty quickly if they just gave Pro away for free and zero royalties. Going bankrupt is not "adapting".