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Unity CEO says half of all games are built on Unity

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by IgnisIncendio, Sep 7, 2018.

  1. IgnisIncendio

    IgnisIncendio

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    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/05/unity-ceo-says-half-of-all-games-are-built-on-unity/

    What do you guys think about this? Surprised me to learn that more than 50% of games on Nintendo's platforms are built on Unity.

    Edit: Just in case of confusion, this isn't an old article; it was interviewed very recently. What's changed was that Unity used to advertise itself as 50% of mobile games; now, it says it's 50% of all games, period. Which I'm quite happy about as an indie :D
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2018
  2. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Not surprising at all. Unity dominates indie and lower budget title space.
     
  3. ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

    ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

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    Sounds like trump speak....is there actual stats to even shed a bit of credibility or just assuming its correct?
     
  4. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    Seems about right to me. 50% of all games probably refers to the number of games developed, and doesn't reflect the revenue or size of the games.

    Unity pretty much has all of the basement games. Unity has most of the indie game studios (about 90% in my area). Unity appears to have about 10% of AAA studios based on informal steam surveys.

    Add those numbers up, and take into account that basement and indie game studios probably release 100x the number of games AAA studios do, and its easy to get to 50% of games.
     
  5. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Unity dominates the indie space and the mobile space, and between those two that accounts for the vast majority of games released in terms of just quantity. Unity jumped on Switch support early as well, so not surprised there.

    Unity is weak in the mid to AAA budget range. AAA games often use in house engines so no surprise there. The mid budget games to just below AAA are probably the best place for Unity to expand. I suspect SRP, ECS, and the Jobs system were specifically undertaken to target the needs of those game developers.
     
  6. ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

    ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

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  7. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Well, Unity games do phone home to Unity by default. So Unity has an idea of how many games are made with their engine already. It wouldn't be too difficult to just compare those numbers Unity is getting for their games against the new releases on the major game marketplaces to come up with a good estimate of Unity's total market share.
     
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  8. ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

    ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

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    It like the X-Files to me...I want to believe but the way CEO's are talking these days..
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2018
  9. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    I'd imagine the majority of switch titles are unity, yeah... and it took pretty hard work on Unity's part to get there (meaning how useful it is to indies)
     
  10. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Do you have some data that contradicts what Unity is claiming?
     
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  11. ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

    ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

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    Lets look at this for a moment:

    For instance...
    Consider Epic and Fortnite is insane. People also debated why Unity never created their own flagship game...Since the latter is on track to finish with 3.5 Billion $ revenue this year.....It makes one wonder why Unity? Could that not have been you?

    And...consider...If you say basement devs/indie devs/small devs etc etc... and they go by that..thats not much money made by the sounds of it.

    So unity has 50% of the crappy games market?

    Not trying to be harsh but that's how it sounds to me.

    Also consider: Apple has a share of the smartphone market and look at their value.....50% of a small pie is not a lot.
     
  12. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    I think you're misunderstanding the math of this. Unity said that half of all games are made with Unity. Fortnite is very popular, but still just 1 game. Being popular doesn't change the fact it is 1 game.
     
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  13. ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

    ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

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    I hear ya but it sounds like it's reaching...its really just nothing but fluff....What does that even mean...50% of all games...as what 95% of games make no money?

    Would you rather 50% of something 1 billion $? or 50% of 3.5 billion $
     
  14. Murgilod

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    It's not reaching at all. You're the one trying to conflate "game" with "success."
     
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  15. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    But their statement made no claims about revenue, total downloads, etc. You seem to be projecting your own bias onto what is essentially a very simple statement on their part. A statement of which they should very easily be able to determine the facts on based on their own data.

    Revenue of games made with Unity is not something they are even in a position to track, so I'm really unclear what you want Unity to do there.
     
  16. ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

    ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

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    That's exactly...its basically talking about nothing....no bias..just see lots of CEO's making statements like this.

    “What powers Unity is a simple philosophy, which is the world is a better place with more creators,” he said. “We drive ourselves to put the most powerful tools possible in the hands of creators, small and large so they can realize their dreams.”

    I am not hating...I just wanted to see more then just fluff words..because very successful games from unity has yet to happen. (Successful as in Hundreds of Millions)
     
  17. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    How exactly is Unity supposed to know how much revenue games with Unity are making?
     
  18. ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

    ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

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    All the best games out there have no secret about how much they made or what was used to develop it. You have heard of google right?

    I will leave on that....I would like like to see Unity themselves or some other developer actually make it using Unity...

    If only to prove it possible and not that your left to be a indie company.

    Someday there will be a first to 100million$ game from Unity...but if all the games combined on unity don't make as much as that 1 game....something to think about. No hate...just thoughts.
     
  19. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Kerbal Space Program
    Ori and the Blind Forest
    Grow Home
    Shadow Tactics
    House Flipper
    Night in the Woods
    Battletech
    Gone Home
    Tacoma
    Cities: Skylines
    Hearthstone
    Hand of Fate
    The Forest
    Thomas Was Along
    Volume
    Oxenfree
    Shadowrun Returns
    Wasteland 2
    Pillars of Eternity
    Furi
    Firewatch
    Slime Rancher
    Sunless Sea
    Broforce
    Beseige
    Assault Android Cactus

    That's just stuff I remember.
     
  20. Antypodish

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    Every statistics from source of target company will be biased.
    Hence no point is showing specific graphs etc. If he is wrong, chances are, some other markets will point it out, or will argue. Until then, is fact unless disproved. Just like history.

    Appears that revenue were not the contexts of interview. So is irrelevant.
    Point is to indicate Unity success so far.

    Not sure how vailid this graph is but here we go, from 2014 (2016 article)



    https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2016/03/24/engine-dominating-gaming-industry-right-now/

    Another one [very recent]



    "I got tired of people arguing back and forth over the popularity of game engines like Unity and Unreal, and I can't find any existing data about this, so I made a script to help me research all the notable* Steam games, and made a graph out of my findings."

    https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/8s20qp/i_researched_the_market_share_of_game_engines_on/

    "Disclaimer
    I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this data. There were simply too many games with unknown engines, corrupted data due to the game engine infobox having extra data, and searching one game's name returning another, more popular game's Wikipedia page. Also AAA companies might put out more Steam apps for a single game than small developers, which might skew the data. I invite you to take a look at the source code and raw excel document, make modifications and draw your own conclusions!"

    These still not the best graphs I would like to see. But they give some info. How accurate, I won't tell. But is quite difficult to find good market share comparison. Probably with more digging.

    If images are too big let me know, I will put in spoilers.
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2018
  21. Kiwasi

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    Very few developers disable Unity analytics, so Unity knows how many Unity games are released. They also know how many devs have disabled analytics, so they can extrapolate with decent accuracy. Unity has released the numbers on occasion. And they likely have up to date internal numbers that the CEO can access.

    Its also relatively easy to get a count on the total number of games released on each platform. You might have to extrapolate a little bit to get PC numbers from steam numbers. And remember Unity also has business relationships with most of the major game distributors, so they may get numbers better then what the public gets.

    From there its just a case of simple arithmetic.
     
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  22. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    This has already happened. Many times.
     
  23. neoshaman

    neoshaman

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    unity is the new paper, the game paper that is, it's what he is saying, it's the goto platform to make games, it doesn't matter to you but it basically say it's accessible and everyone use it.
     
  24. angrypenguin

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    It's a good idea to question advertised statistics. They usually can't be taken at face value, and you need to pay attention for "weasel words" which make it sound like one thing when it's really saying another.

    Still... in this case I don't actually see a problem. If you read the words of the actual statement there's a little more detail to it, and it's based on information I'm pretty sure they have access to.
    He's also talking per-platform, and qualifying where platforms each fit within the statistics. What I'm not clear on is if "built" refers to in-progress projects or just released stuff. It's valid either way, but not clear from here alone.

    I still take all published statistics with a grain of salt, particularly when the study that produced them isn't documented in detail, but in this case and considering the context I'm not seeing any major sticking points.
     
  25. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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  26. ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

    ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

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    This is pretty much the solid answer. I love the passion this stirred and the information that was provided. Thank you to everyone. Good info and great perspective. @angrypenguin
     
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  27. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    On the note of explaining how data was gathered, that second one in @Antypodish's post is great. If you click through the link the author explains exactly what the numbers mean and therefore exactly what question they answer (which is not quite the same as the question they set out to answer), and how the method used may impact the accuracy of the figures.

    If you're going to rely on figures for anything important then that's the kind of research you want to do and/or find. Numbers without thorough context are dangerous.
     
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  28. IgnisIncendio

    IgnisIncendio

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    Hey, I made that! As you can see from the comments of that post, and my huge disclaimer... I messed up while making that graph. The script that I made uses Wikipedia's fuzzy search, so that the Steam names and the Wikipedia names doesn't have to be exactly the same.

    However, that came with a lot of problems; for example, one indie dev complained that my script listed his game as Unreal, even though he used Orge3D. Upon searching, I found out that his game, "GearCity" didn't have a Wikipedia site, so it returned "Gears of War" instead, which you know, used Unreal. And I guess there's a lot more games out there that redirects to big games, which is why Frostbite also has a way bigger number of games that should exist (the script says 200+, but EA doesn't have that many games on Steam).

    So yeah. I've made huge improvements to it on Github, but frankly it's a hard search to do and none of the methods that I tried, PCGamingWiki, SteamDB, IndieDB etc all have the same problems of not covering most of the games.

    Thank you, and definitely! I made it very clear that the data might not be accurate because of the method that I used, and the comments gave me some insight into how that method might be flawed too.
     
    Last edited: Nov 27, 2018
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  29. Antypodish

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    O wow, how world is small, if thats you indeed ;)
    What are chances you are also not only in Unity world, but looking in this forum section to catch on such topic lol.
    Thats nice.

    I have updated the post with graphs, to add disclaimer.
    However, if is not even accurate, as we noticed, is hard to get grasp on any comparison data. So this give at least some form of idea. And best, if is from independent source. So bias is much smaller, if any.

    It is near impossible to get all data and process correctly, without spending significant time on it.
    I have seen somewhere did also analytics on steam games, regarding hidden gems.
    Lot of filtering was implemented, to get at least near good results. Not without quirks.

    Well done for what you have done anyway.

    If you ever execute improved graphs, please drop it here. I think will bring good contribution.

    This is always true. Never trust with all your hart ;)
     
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  30. IgnisIncendio

    IgnisIncendio

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    I'm the OP :p
    But yeah, there's no easy way to run this search, since I don't have the resources and analytics that Unity has, for example. Thank you though, and I'll be sure to post any updates.
     
  31. Antypodish

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    Oh lol, yeah that makes sense now. :)
    No that I take notice to every person name, if replaying. Rather look into written content :p
     
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  32. konsic

    konsic

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    Half Life 3 on Unity ?
     
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  33. Frienbert

    Frienbert

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    I am curious what the statistics look like for consoles and PC.
     
  34. IgnisIncendio

    IgnisIncendio

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    I guess for indie PC games you can check Steam Indie. Seems to be around 50% Unity there in the Top Sellers and What's Popular.

    Not sure about consoles though, but John did say Nintendo platforms has over 50% Unity so... yeah.
     
  35. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    From the interview in question: