Unity's pricing not to change, WebGL will be free

And how many metric S*** tonnes of non-legit ones?

 

Is Australia counted in Asia Pacific? Loads of people in Melbourne use Unity.

 

Australia is generally considered to be its own thing.

 

Totally agree, as a Pro customer I'm also very intrigued about the roadmap and exactly where they plan to take Unity 5.X holistically. Because that will have a major weight / impact on "right tools for the right job" and all that jazz.

 

Yes it is.

 

Some interesting statements in that blog post. Everyone I've ever talked to about Unity's pricing has a huge problem with Unity's pricing structure, especially as it relates to add-ons. Things like needing to buy desktop pro, to get iOS and Android Pro. Subscription pricing isn't really considered competitive either.

Oh well, we'll see where this goes. Hopefully Unity Technology doesn't become another Garage Games.

 

Thank you for making this announcement. Now, I can get off the fence and move forward with my purchase from 3.X pro to 5.x Pro. Yes, the subscription model is a bad value, and yes, I will chose NOT to purchase the separate Android Pro (resulting in less professional releases for Android), and yes, I will still upgrade my personal Unity Pro + iOS pro for $1,500.

I respect that Unity took time to consider this. Though I'm bugged that Unity has no path for dual-users like me (ie two concurrent Pro licenses via different companies), in the end, I realize my situation is RARE, which makes it my problem, not yours.

Gigi

 

It is good that the WebGL add-on is free. I just wish the same had happened to the mobile add-ons. It appears to me to be a fairly common sentiment (inside and outside the forums) that Unity pricing is OK for PC, but mobile much less so. A PC developer can often make more use of the Pro features, but a mobile developer pays 3 times as much. Doesn't seem quite right.

 

So mobile devs still pay triple (Pro+iOS Pro+Android Pro - mostly for one primary platform, iOS), and continue to subsidise PC indie devs and support for experimental web technologies (think about it, when was the last time you *actually played* a real HTML5 game, not just a tech demo?)

I guess there's both winners and losers...

The biggest unanswered question is how well will Unity 5 work on mobile. Will new high-end features hurt mobile performance? or will features like the new UI system give it a real boost? How will stability and plugin compatibility be?

I'd really like to have seen the 'team license' go away - and be merged into Unity Pro (even if it means a price rise). Lots of professional teams are suffering from unnecessarily long import times, and giving all Pro users the asset cache server would be a nice step forwards.

 

Personally I believe Unity's pricing model is flawed for addons.

Had you been able to purchase iOS for 1500, and this would work only on device and within the editor, then this is fair. What is not fair is customers paying 1500 for desktop that they'll never use in order to deploy to iOS, which is a total of 3000 for 1 platform.

I'd say this needs addressing. Just because I help moderate, it doesn't mean I can't point out as a user, what I feel is fair or not. In this case I feel it's unfair on those people.

I will always want desktop support - so it doesn't affect me. But for those guys only wanting to build for mobile, then it's an unfair extra 1500 I don't think they should pay.

 

For now, I don't care. If I get myself successful in future with using UE4, I would donate grands towards epic headquarters. 19 for such engine is just too less. Anyway, that is surely equalizing two of them nicely, from economic point. Added important fact, unity has a free version to work with, does not require a beefy pc to run. So unity's current decisions really does not affect me. I am excited about unity 5, [could u bring gui in this month? ]

In future, I will target UE4 or cryengine for my dreams. That will not be for price, but for engine capabilities. Capabilities on which unity might fail.

 

Well said Hippo! I build for iOS and Android - ONLY. Which means $3000 ( or $1500 for upgrade) so I can get iOS Pro, which still leaves me with no splashscreen and no render-to-texture on Android, since it wasn't worth the extra $1500 to me.

Gigi

 

UE4 was rewritten, with very few parts recycled, to be game agnostic, more user friendly, and simply better than UDK. It's quite a step up. And this is why there have been so many never-ending discussions since it was released.

 

Team license should be free for all, to promote collaboration.
From what I've heard, it's somewhat broken right now, so I'm wondering who exactly is buying and using that license anyway.
Maybe if you make it standard and people start using it and producing bug reports, you can iron out the bugs AND promote collaboration.

 

WebGL isn't going away, and will be replacing the webplayer sooner or later, since it's clear that's the way things are heading, plus it will apply to mobile platforms as well. Not sure how you could manage to twist this into a negative.

--Eric

 

WebGL free? Hooray!!! ~~~~

Now if you made the Unity Editor in HTML5 as well....

 

HTML5/WebGL might not be going away - but I don't think the long-term future is going to involve 'compiling' massive C++ codebases into Javascript (e.g. the Unity engine and the middleware such as PhysX that it includes)

I'm not yet convinced that HTML5 gaming will be significant on mobile any time soon (if ever) - as it's massively inefficient (especially doing the C++ -> JS thing), and even if it becomes viable, Apple and Google will see it as a threat to their App Store revenue, and do something about that.

 

If I'm able to afford Unity Pro (which I'm not), I think I'd be able to afford the other pro addons. Anyway, the price is fine by me, it'll just take time to be able to purchase it. What I dislike tho is the subscription model of Unity. 75$/month is way more than I can afford right now, and doesn't really help. Might as well buy the Unity Pro licence if I'm making enough money for a 75$/month subscription. If it was 20-30$ I'd say that's more beneficial. But this is all just one poor guys opinion.

 

Quite a lot of people with that opinion though. Both poor like us and otherwise.

 

Yeah another good reason not to bother with mobile. Have you guys thought of just porting your games to unreal for mobile

 

It is often far more expensive than simply paying the licensing fees. Both for initial development time and support.

 

Do you really need pro for mobile?

 

I was really hoping for a pricing structure similar to UE4. The WebGL addon is amazing news though. I'm pretty much on the fence at the moment. I love coding in C# and I know Unity so well but I've only ever used Unity Free. UE4 has so much value at such a low price point but then I have to spend time learning something new again.

It will be interesting to see how the free/pro features are split in Unity 5. For now though my current game is being made in Unity since a lot of time has been spent on it already.

 

I think Unity is at a cross road - and sticking to its current pricing model is going against the logic and shows it is out of touch with reality.

The current prolonged economic downturn means even in western countries, people are starting to feel the pinch, Unity is becoming a VERY expensive hobby. The economies of western countries will continue its long term economic recession reminicent of the Japanese experience of 90s (and they have been in economic down turn for the past 20+ years).
Just today, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin spoken of Europe's "economic malaise", the same Eurozone crisis that's been going on since 2009!

This means, a large section of Unity's best customers (hobbyist from the more affluent western countries) will not be able to afford Unity or are not willing to pay the premium for it. While the rest of the world (developing countries) are just too poor to afford it. Now this is all fine and dandy if Unity is the ONLY GAME ENGINE IN TOWN; but problem is, there is someone out there offering something FAR BETTER and FAR CHEAPER. We all know who that is.
The cheaper and more affordable economic model will ALWAYS WIN. Look at MAC vs IBM Clones, Android vs iOS, the rise of chinese manufacturing - cheaper and affordable competitor will eventually take over the whole market. As matter of fact, Unity was built on this foundation - being one of the cheapest and most affordable full feature game engine out there.

So it defies the logic why UT continue to stick to its pricing model even when market condition has changed dramatically.

People here (and we have argued over this over a million times over) will invariably said that Unity is still "better", "better workflow" or "not having to pay % of profit is better" or "Asset Store is a million times better than UE's" as counter arguments. But I think everyone needs to realize, UE is not a static target, they are not deaf and blind, the fact that they are changing their pricing model so drastically reflect their willingness to change - which means they can change UE for the better faster than Unity can react. Also, "not having to pay for % of profit" only applies to a small % of the user base here - the rest are just way too poor to even afford Pro or not even making money out of the whole venture. Affordability trumps over this "not having to pay % of profit is better" argument. If you cannot even afford the tool you need to make money, the rest of the agument is invalid.

I feel for UT, it really doesn't have much time. Many developers are already "trying out" UE, that's already a warning sign. Many will consider switching in the future, but due to current project, will stay on Unity for now in current cycle.

Unity right now has the largest Indie developer user base share, but UT is running on steam, the "momentum" of this large user base is keeping them going, but sooner or later, people are going to jump off this train when they know a better and more affordable option is out there. Then the steam becomes fume, and before you know it, there will be nothing to run UT.

 

If you're doing anything beyond a hobby/learning project, you're going to want the profiler, and there's a pretty good chance you'll want static batching, render-to-texture, asset bundles, or lightprobes. The splash screen is quite a big deal, too, if you want your game to look professional.

 

Because they did surveys and found the majority prefer the current model. It defies logic that you'd deny this, unless you think they're just outright lying.

Except that's not how it actually works in the real world. You may notice Apple has a truly absurd pile of money and continues to increase sales of the iPhone, and the Mac has been slowly and steadily increasing marketshare for quite a few years now (and IBM left that market entirely, which is sort of the opposite of "winning"). Please tell me you're just trolling and don't actually believe that "cheaper always wins", because real economics is clearly more complex than that and there are so many counter-examples; in fact excessively low pricing can be an actual turn-off in some cases. If people see value in something, they'll buy it.

--Eric

 

Their sampling has been called into question, which is different from outright accusing them of lying.

You're wrong about the iPhone with respect to Apple's market share. Apple has been losing cash with continual poor business decisions and now has less than a 20% (and eroding) market share in the smartphone market that they once had over 80% in just a few years ago, and they're now desperately trying to regain their market presence with various lower cost options.

 

Except it is possible to skew the results of a survey depending on who you limit it to.

 

They didn't limit the survey, they took samples of the entire user base.

 

Which samples though? Your statement does not refute mine. It could still be skewed regardless of whether or not they intended it.

 

Limiting by criteria is intentional. Taking random samples of an entire set is not intentional

 

Are there any specific details available? Or is it literally just "We did a survey and people prefer X"?

 

Well, we wouldn't know the truth would we? Unless a few years down the track then one of us would be proven right.

Wrong, MAC was SOUNDLY defeated by IBM clones back in early 90s, at one point Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy.




Even today, Macintosh's market share is still less than 10% (7.69% to be precise). And IBM Clones (that includes Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, Asus, Toshiba and thousands of other vendors) have 90% of the market.

And the recent turn around of Apple's fortune is mostly attributed to iPhone and iPod - while the computer side of their business made negligible market share gain and those are mostly attributed to the better pricing model that makes them extremely competitive - OS upgrades that are free compare to $300+ on Windows platform, the MS's screw up on Windows 8 and usability issues (is it a tablet or is it a desktop OS?).

Come back to me when IBM Clones are at 7.69% market share and Apple at 90.62% and you might have an argument. Until then, none of your arguments stands.

 

It's great that WebGL will be free now, it makes perfectly sense as future "replacement" of the WebPlayer.
That the pricing model won't change in the near future might be a bummer to some folks but is reasonable as well.
I personally hoped for a decreased price for the addons but one can't have it all...

 

Well, the decision to add webgl in the standard version made me upgrade today all my licenses.

If I wanted to go to ue4 I would have to buy a superPC to be able to develop.
Also the build sizes for android and ios on ue4 are not particular ... small.

 

Nope. You claimed that the cheaper alternative will take over the whole market, which is factually incorrect. The majority, yes in most cases. The whole market, no. But another important factor you failed to address is sustainability...regardless of marketshare Apple actually makes money on their computer business while most other companies make little or nothing—I mentioned IBM leaving the "IBM clone" business. Or how about iOS, where Apple makes most of the smartphone profit regardless of not having a majority marketshare; Apple and Samsung are the only two companies currently actually making any real money in smartphones. What good would pricing Unity into oblivion do if they aren't able to sustain profitability? For that matter we don't know if Epic's pricing model is viable or not in the long run. I have seen criticism of Cryengine's pricing as being clearly unworkable (though there doesn't seem to be much interest in Cryengine anyway).

--Eric

 

I'm able to run Effects Cave at about 20 FPS in the editor on maximum settings. My system is roughly three years old at this point but even when it was entirely new I doubt it would have been valued at more than $1,000.

AMD Phenom II X4 965
8GB DDR3-1600
GeForce GTX 460 1GB

The processor was an old model and had almost been discontinued by NewEgg when I purchased it for $80. My GPU cost $200 but I rank it as one of the best deals I've ever gotten on a GPU. At three years old it is still roughly comparable to cards selling for ~$120 and runs my games on maximum settings with no problems.

 

Everyone says this, but it's never by anyone who's actually used UE4.

 

"Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is reality"

A big market share isn't much use if your profit margins are incredibly tight because your competitive edge is price. Many of the IBM clones are sold on very low margins at the bottom of the price spectrum. And it isn't IBM that is selling them. Most of the companies selling them have market shares smaller than Apple. Apple are the one making money. But it is a different situation to the one Unity face.

Unity are the dominant player in market share, but have come up against a disruptive business model. The full effects of which will take time to become apparent.

I think Unity will keep the market share because of the free version. But it is a giant leap from there to Pro. A gap that many users sit in, and so does UE4.

It is not an easy position for Unity, and the response feels a little underwhelming. But it is Unite this week. I wouldn't be surprised to hear something there that changes the situation. The price announcement now means we can focus on whatever is announced that moves Unity forward.

 

There must be a lot of big businesses using mobile / Unity / simple business themed game as an ad platform.

I'm still a hobbyist and that comes and goes, past few years I spend as much on Unity Asset store trinkets as someone that licensed Unity Pro but now I am remodeling an old house I bought. True the material costs are cheaper than I expected, except for bathroom tile for some bizarre reason, but that means WebGL Free is very welcome, because hobbyist or not, a good idea and a good game are worthwhile pursuits.

The main thing I don't like about Unity now is with Unity 4.5's new API layers I will have to buy new PC & Mac; cheapest available as I'm not a big business that can get huge tax breaks from treating computers and software as cheap throwaways when they are anything but cheap. Maybe I will try UE4 when I buy my new PC & Mac but from what I've read UE4 on my current PC and Mac is a non-starter.

 

That's cool except epic has traditionally been the premium 'Apple' product though. I mean this is like Apple selling iPhone6's with Metal support for penuts with a sub and %. I don't agree with a lot of what I am da bawss said, but I think most likely right now, Epic are 'winning'. At least until Unity 5 hits

I'm not a head in the sand type. But, I've chosen Unity because for what I am doing, it's the best possible fit. It's horses for courses, and I wouldn't call UE4 better, but for a different purpose.

 

A small number of years ago I asked a similar question about people playing games on their phones.

 

.gears has some great HTML5 mobile games that can be put onto the desktop as a web app, its really awesome I want to do the same at some point when I have time.

 

That would have been well over a decade ago...

OK, maybe in a decade, HTML5 games on mobile will be commonplace (if Apple/Google allow it, of course!). But unless we move from current CPUs to a CPU designed specifically to run Javascript (well, maybe asm.js), the native code games will still have 5-10x better performance, and more importantly, much lower power consumption.

 

Not at all. Small numbers of people were indeed playing games on their phone long before that, but it wasn't until after the iPhone rocked up that it really started to gain traction. That happened in 2007, so at a stretch it's a maximum of 7 years ago that I could have said that.

Then consider that it's not as if we're only just accepting it as commonplace now. It's been like that for years, so we can shorten the timespan on the back end as well...

And yes, technical advances are needed. But I don't know that a comparison between native and JS games is relevant. For the most part I really don't think players care. It certainly didn't keep people away from Flash games.

 

Not sure how that's a valid argument - you seem to be under the impression that all games must be designed to the highest possible specs overall, rather than the highest possible for a target platform. Many of the most profitable games available today could easily run at 1/10th the performance of a native version. Power might be an issue, but not that much of one; you only need a few minutes to get people hooked and paying.

 

I think a lot of the WebGL skeptics probably haven't tried it out yet. I've been playing around with Three.js, Phaser, Babylon, and some other frameworks and they are impressive and feel just as responsive as any native game I have played. I follow some blogs of html5 devs and I know at least one of them makes good six figure income just selling html5 games to publishers. Plus you can use something like CocoonJS to wrap it up in a native mobile app if you want.

I'm pretty happy to see the included support for this, not so much about the pro pricing but I think time will tell on that front.

 

I would love to know more about these 'surveys'.

I'm on my second generation of fully paid Unity licenses (Pro, iOS Pro and Android Pro), and I never received any survey.

 

Well it's not all about fiscals look at CryEngine, it's by far the cheapest solution, has a rendering pipeline and an out the box presence that obliterates any other engine. Nobody will touch it, simply because there is a lack of support and community integration, the tools are un-intuitive and the documentation is lacking. Worst of all hit a bug and you've nowhere to turn.

If CryEngine sorted this portion out, Unity and Epic would be in real trouble. But I doubt it'll ever happen..

So I still believe it's about quality here, it's worth it if the quality is there. UE4 is still an "immature" engine in many ways and it needs time. But so will Unity with 5.X, the biggest shift will be when Epic get's their teething issues sorted.

All that being said, it has to make sense as Hippo says. Why charge for PC when some will never use it? Even if you're a multi-million dollar outfit, you still have to justify purchases. That's how you stay a multi-million dollar company.

I've worked at some big multi-nationals and even getting a copy of visio was like drawing blood from a stone.