Why Unity 5.0 is STILL a good deal

Yeah, this was my takeaway too. I love seeing the new competition between the different engines. Will be interesting to see how Unity responds. Unity is probably still the best fit for me, but I'll definitely look at UE4/CryEngine and I do think Unity has a perception problem with their pricing that they'll need to address. My hope is that each company will be offering a variety of payment models to suit different needs -- I think game developers are smart enough to not need a one size fits all payment model. ie, Unity doesn't need to change payment models as much as they need to open up new payment models.

 

I've been using Unity for quite some years now (2.5 was my first version I think... Unity Indie + iPhone Basic)... 2 months later came an update to 2.6 and yes... it was a paying update. Since then multiple update have seen the light which increased in pricing compared to the price we paid 2009.

I'm currently in the stages for a new business. I have 3 employees and I have to buy Pro versions for all of them (since you may not mix pro/non-pro) even if some of my employees would not need i.e. the iOS pro... Switching to a subscription for new licenses looks "okya-ish" first hand, but when you take a look at a long term usage, the pricing is too expensive (especially if you need 3 pro platforms per employee) and the restriction that you cannot keep the pro features once the subscription is killed is a KO "feature" to me (imagine that you've paid 2.5 years of subscription... why not keep the pro license and convert it). Much of this would be less painful if the pricing would actually be lower (especially the different platform mix).

So, at the start of a new business, at a point where I still have the possibility to switch engine, I'm really analyzing this and in the end it's "bang for the bucks".

UE4 with the source code delivery actually gives me the possibility to implement features I need and to fix bugs I find. If Unity would hand out the sources (not only to the big companies which surely have access to it but to everyone), it would be beneficial since bug fixes would find their way much quicker to the userbase. I'm sure that the community will quickly implement decent UI support into UE4...

I've been in the gaming industry since '96 and I've been working with the U2-Engine in 2001 (btw. the license costs for the company I worked for back then was around 500k€; company went bankrupt and I didn't sign any NDA... also that was 13 years ago ), I've been the lead for a game engine development and so I know what it actually costs to develop a game engine.

So I understand the struggle Unity is going through. I'm quite sure that in the background they're having meetings and they're considering different ways to stay afloat the situation CT and Epic put them into. U5 sounds great on paper, but we'll have to wait and see the release to actually be able to compare those engines. And as we know, Unity's new version starts *never* were without problems (feature completeness, usability, bug rate, ...)...

I think throughout the month of April we'll see a response from Unity... until then, I'll put one of my programmers onto the evaluation of Unity alternatives...

 

TL;DR all.

Unity 5 is still a good deal because, it'll probably still have a free version.

One of the main problems I see here is that hardly anyone has mentioned that Unity still provides Unity free. Now one can argue that those Unity free users are not serious developers....but I'd think it's still a very large market, and if it's not that then it's a stepping stone for those new developers to become serious. As far as I know, none of the other game engines are offering this. I believe...sadly, in a sense Unity pro users are basically paying for the Unity free users, at least till they become pro users. Which is probably part of the reason why Unity Pro prices are higher than the other engines. But now Unity must re-adjust and try to balance their prices while factoring in what their competitors have to offer.


I just hope they won't really copy Unreal's business model, and kill Unity free and just have a low subscription fee. Imagine the cries and whines then too.

 

I don't really understand how people think.
They think like time is free. How much do you pay your employee ? Is it a low wage country ?
Switching from one engine to another is really expensif. If it took only one or two months to adjust, it will probably cost you the price of your Unity licenses.

That's why most buisness owner don't switch tech too often.
And I don't talk about the risk you take. You leave sometinhg you know to someting you don't know with a lot less track of record of indie games.
And you loose 1 or 2 months on your planning. In any business this can have huge consequences.

It's like when I see buisness buying the first price PC and paying people waiting the computeur doing the job. Well if you get 2 or 3 days of productivity with a high end PC, your high end computer is paid. It's not like that on big company because they have people measuring and trying to increase productivity.

Unity licenses are pretty cheap compare to labor price. So I don't really understand why so much people are jumping in the train of the race to the bottom for indie engine.

 

Metron, if you want a subscription-like payment for Unity licenses that you end up owning, why not talk to your bank? That's exactly the kind of thing business loans are for. Also, Unity isn't a bank, which is kind of what you're asking for in a rent-to-buy scenario - they don't get the money up front, but you get the goods up front, meaning they're taking the financial risk on board.

From what I've seen, most shops with rent-to-buy schemes are actually offering it in quiet partnership with a bank or other financial institution. The shop gets more sales, the bank reaps the interest, win-win. I imagine it''d be pretty difficult for Unity to set that up as an international business.

On that note, it might also be worth looking for a local Unity reseller. They're around, and they're far more likely to have partnerships with financial institutions since they're often in the business of making large sales to small businesses.

 

You get that with subscription anyway: 'A Unity subscription gives access to the latest version of Unity within the subscription period, as well as all previous versions. Any new releases occurring during your subscription plan are automatically included at no additional cost'.

Also, it's $75 PM ($900 PA) so it is not the same price.

 

I like Unity's subscription, I don't like that you'll end up paying more, and Unity wont even be yours in the end.

I guess if I really wanted to a) make several payments b) keep unity after some time, I could just take a loan, same thing.

 

I'm not talking about getting a loan or something like that. I'm talking about the subscription costing me more on mid term than buying the full license. The Unity subscription doesn't make sense for a small to medium company. It's ok for people who cannot afford to lay down the minimum $3k per seat if they want to develop for mobile devices with the pro features. Offering a complete set of tools for a low subscription fee works out for companies. I wouldn't even think about subscription vs one time fee if the subscription wouldn't be more expensive in 3-4 years perspective ($225 * 48 > $4500 + $2250 (upgrade fees)). This is $4k per seat more expensive than purchasing it initially.

When running a business, you're not thinking about the next year or two... you're thinking about where you're going to in 3-4 or even 5 years. I'm currently planning with 17 employees in 3 years. Sum that up.

And then there's UE4 source code with subscription... low subscription per seat, you can still use it if you stop the subscription... and the "downside" is the 5% of income... In terms of business, for me that's 66% of 1 additional employee per $1million of income which is reasonable if you take into account that you get the full source code and thus the possibility to fix bugs yourself and add features you need.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Unity is a bad engine. But I'm saying that before Unity is at a comparable state, we have to wait at least until U5 has been released, and then some months to 1 year longer before the new feature set is in an actually usable state (if you go any further than the basic prototype development).

 

I love the fact UT has a subscription model, I hate the fact it's a one year commitment, has no use after the subscription, *and* costs considerably more than comparative products. For example, take a look at adobe creative cloud pricing.

 

Time is not free, no... but I have to make long term decisions and counterweight the actual costs against each other. Dependent on the entry level, a developer here in Belgium costs about $4.5k (all taxes and insurances included) which makes it $54k per year + bonus, let's say $60k. So, it costs to evaluate technology and to make an informed decision. I didn't say: Jump to UE4, we're stopping Unity. I'm saying, I'll give myself a month to evaluate how UE4 would fit into my business and to see how Unity is going to react on Epic's and Crytek's Subscription steps.

I'm lucky that I am more or less in the beginning of this new business. And even though I already had quite some exposure (for those who talk french, go see www.arvi3d.be ), and quite some feedback, the amount of actual programming development was actually reasonable low (2 man months), the gfx asset production was longer. Talking to my investors, I'll have to give them answers about the business costs and the licenses I'll own... It would be foolish to leave out information about U4 and CE3...

As for technology helping you: It's about the toolset. We're using IncrediBuild for all our C++ development. Even if it costs quite some bucks per seat, the time gain is considerable (we reduced the compiling time of the 1.5 million lines of code project from 25 minutes to merely 2:30 minutes). So, the evaluation of the toolset is important for any business.

 

Creative Cloud isn't really worth the money if you can avoid upgrading IMO. Unity 5 looks like a "must have" upgrade. Everything about it is attractive except the price, but that's the way it goes.

 

At least with the subscription it just rolls over to 5, $95/month (here in the UK) is not bad for my studio still- I think something has to be done about the heavy differences with money conversion though, on the asset store something for 9.50 dollars equals to something over 8 in euros- that won't be an issue with the unreal store it seems. The $20 for UE4, was precisely $20- not doubling to $40 cause I am UK based.

 

Best move for UT :
a) Keep Unity Pro at 1500$
b) Selling Mobile Pro 600-750$.
c) Remove the screen logo from all free version.

My 0.2$

 

So many people whined when adobe made creative cloud, I for one loved it, I'm using about 5 of their programs and paying a lot less than if I had to buy them with the old price, and the best no need to pay for updates. I wish Unity had something similar.

 

Why would they remove the screen logo.. that's their ticket to get more users. Even Unreal requires this with udk and unreal engine. The Unity splash screen does look pretty weak compared to Epic's.

 

Personal Opinion - I love Unity and that won't change any time soon. I'm super excited for all the new great features coming our way and I can't wait to get my grubby hands on the beta (whenever that is going to start). The new "graphical" updates really make me happy due to the fact that I have been asking for all these eye candy features for a while now. It may not be so much of interest to others but then again, you can't always please everyone.

Surely, there are still many areas where UT needs to focus on but I am confident that all things will happen in time. Sure, Unreal and Crytek have a different pricing model now and it's attractive but I think that Unity Pro is worth the $1500 and upgrading price. What I do disagree with is the subscription pricing UT offers. $75 is simply too much so I hope to see an adjustment there in the near future. In any case, there is some awesome stuff coming our way!

 

That's a terrible move because Mobile Pro is a product that should not exist in the first place. To use Mobile Pro, you need to own Unity Pro. The only features in Mobile Pro are the same features you already paid for in Unity Pro.

 

Exactly.

 

features are the same but the easy 1 click export features are what people care about.

 

The exception here is that Adobe does not give you any other option any more. Without perpetual licenses you are completely and 100% dependant on what Adobe decides to do with the price and the software. Any perpetual license can worst case at least be used as long as you have a system running the software.With CC you may have cheap prices now but stop paying for it, one day. Best you can do then is - at least for the time being - Adobe allowing you to convert your PSDs with an otherwise useless and inactive software to another format. I won't get tired repeating: Leasing as an alternative option is a good thing. Leasing as the only option is the worst thing that can happen to a customer in the long run.

That is actually why I was pleasantly surprised that Epic (at least for now) explicitly allow the further use of a cancelled subsription. If adobe allowed to change from CC to perpetual - even if for a comapreable large sum - things would not be as bad as they are right now.

And - yes. I am saying this in the full awareness of the arguments and reasoning I will get for this statement and how wrong I am.

 

Maybe Unity should kill off the option to buy Pro editions and instead go full on subscription model. The problem is they've already committed to the $75 a month thing which is just too much money.

Now people are like what the heck- I can get Cryengine for $9 a month shortly or get UE4 for just $19 a month + royalties of 5%.

So now people will question is Unity 5 worth it. Now, if you are already making money from your Unity games then of course its probably worth the upgrade easily

but if you're basically at the early stages of a project or just evaluating different projects now UE4, etc will seem quite tempting.

Yes there is Unity Free which is a good start. But if your title needs features out of scope of Unity Free then those other deals will be enticing I am sure and perhaps make Unity 5 not look like a good deal for those folks

I still think Unity will dominate cell phones though. Whenever I post in these topics I am talking bout PC/Mac/Linux/console

 

We'll have to see about that. Consider that unlike regular Pro, mobile Pro is $225 per month, which is huge.

 

The only reason I was thinking Unity will dominate cell phones is due to Unity Free. But eh-- I forgot bout the $100k thing. So they have to upgrade to Pro anyways. so yeah I have no idea how it will go on that front with all of this competition

 

Making $100k on a phone is pretty rare in the first place outside of larger studios, and they can afford the cost. Plus, once you're at $100k, buying the $4500 license is a pittance.

 

I'll just keep using Unity cause it's free and I love the way it works. I'm working on a 2D pixel art game and I don't know if that's even doable in UE4.
I'm curious though if Unity will make any changes to their pricing in response to this

 

EDIT: Forgive me unity I'm an idiot that was caught in the heat of the moment.

 

At least SpeedTree is a new feature and not paying for the same features all over again like you do with iOS/Android Pro.

 

Visual programing

As I mention in this tread:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/183341-Antares-Universe-VIZIO-Showcase

Unity HAS excelent Vizio Programming plugin : called AU VIZIO

It has 1:1 every Unity class as Visual Block !!!
It has additional blocks to grasp the power of visual programing
It has only one active and one inactive developer, and they did a great job making this plugin
It does not have a marketing team around to talk about it

So please STOP talking that Unity doesen't have proper viusal programming tool,beacuse there is !

( I used to work with UDK UE3, and saw blueprint, AU Vizio is as good as blueprint at least )

 

My favourite part about AU Vizio is how it's buggy as hell and randomly the entire UI just flips upside down and sometimes just totally crashes my editor. This isn't as good as blueprint. Not by a longshot.

 

Thanks MooseMouse. Yes, we definitely are reading!

 

If an individual, not a company, makes over $100k with Unity Free, he/she has to buy Unity Pro?

 

Yes.

 

Yes, but even if you make over $100k even not in Unity you still can't use the free version.

 

The switch from Unity to Unreal might be cheap on paper but expensive in time, I don't have the spare time to learn Unreal.

I just hope Unity lower their prices for the addons, like others I feel paying the same price again for addons a bit unreasonable.

 

When did youl use AU Vizio last time to give such a negative opinion? Couple of years before?
Did you try last version? Couple of days ago?
Yes AU Vizio has bugs, so does every program, even our beloved Unity. But users finds bugs and devlopers are fixing them.
So its the same with AU Vizio.
With AU Vizio you can edit code in runtime and save your changes and can blueprint do the same?

 

All good and well, but you forget something elemental: it's not part of unity itself, Blueprint is part of UE4 (under heavy development)

 

I'm not a pro user (learning the stuff) but did you do some of the math?

price / 21 = ?

21 is how many months between Unity 4 and unity 5. June 2012 -> March 2014.

Just going 1 platform ($600) upgrade + initial price ($1500) = $2100 / 21 months = $100 per month -- vs $75 for the license

Again, *IF* you started back in June of 2012 with a pro license and were to continue forward but using the v5 engine at the fixed buy price.

Now going legacy style, where you don't want to upgrade a project or 2 or ..., then you may have to maintain 2 different tool sets and 2 different license contracts... That gets a bit trickier and I'm not clear on it. It's just some numbers I was thinking about.

Looking at "other" engine offerings... "$19/mo + 5% gross" - then reading the descriptions. If it sells for $10 where you get $7, you pay $0.50 - 5% of the $10 end-point price. That's stated by them in their terms. (nothing mentioning 'sales' or the like which could still be from original list price) They *TALK* about million dollar sales but their explanation is $10 list where you get $7, they will still get 5% of the $10 - not your "gross profits" but gross sales from any area (steam, stores.. whatever).

That v4 engine is also listed as "rough" (translation: buggy as hell). As you lay out how the numbers work, running reasonable calculations on potential sales... Well, everyone hopes to make something popular but 2 or so years dev time, a couple engine upgrades, etc...

Gaining and planning on profits from revenue is much easier with fixed costs - and much more onerous when it's percent based - especially if you do hit some success - included with sales and such involved when that happens and you have shares due elsewhere.

Going with a fixed price or license costs... That's a question worth looking at but percent points off the gross is a lot harder to look at.

 

You forget something in your math.

Well Unity 5 is not out yet (preorder).
if you pay 1500$ + upgrade price it cover you 2 cycle unless you are not lucky, and you bough unity 4 just few month before unity 5 preorder.
If you bought unity4 full price and Unity 5 upgrade, you've got unity4-unity5 21month, and unit 5.1, Unity 5.2 etc.. until Unity 6.
so it's 2100$/42 = 50$ per months. after that it's 600$ for every 21 month, which is 29$, royalty free.

If you only target one platform, the initial 1500$ avoid you to pay royalty.

The first 4 years it's 50$ after that it's 29$, royalty free. If you think long term Unity is cheaper (no royalty).

Unity is more expensif when you start targeting more platforms.

 

Sorry but that math doesn't work so well.

You are projecting forward to an unknown product release date - Unity 6 - assuming a flat, linear projection. That's not so hot.

I assume you're a developer and any developer out there would start laughing assuming that an as yet undefined product release "in the future" is going to take exactly the same time as their previous effort. *snicker*

As such, going beyond "now" type price and availability info is not good unless you cautiously avoid certain things. You could just as readily skew it another way - "having bought v4 4 months ago..." - now an upgrade tag.

My biggest underpinning point was something you do mention in passing. Royalties.

Known dev tool costs don't mess with profits like royalties do and we've all seen licensing and royalty issues come up for companies - repeatedly. A "you buy" or "you subscribe" but what you build with it is yours... That's a very simple model and no real contentions about who gets how much of who's profits.

To quote UE4's plan:

Now tell me if you can see any potential in that statement for legal issues on sales volumes of things you make with *THEIR* tools. I do - very easily. Something goes on sale, this vendor sells for more, that one for less, etc. Claims and such can mess your day up.

So whether buying outright or subscription model from here does look a lot less complex when you finish a product vs paying royalties to someone who may claim you owe them more and nobody I know in development likes the idea of visiting law offices and court houses. There may be some who like that but I've yet to meet them.

To a home hobbiest doing this, I don't see any real issues going either way. To someone aiming to be a new professional business in this field, they may want to consider potential ramifications of claims against their profits.

 

even though I've moaned and groaned about some of the license pricing.. i'm still a firm believer in Unitys' model and goal of democratizing games.

I also love the asset store, I may not have purchased many from it.. it just shows how great their system is setup and will continue to grow. I really don't see CE/UE4 making much of change here IMO.

I saw this quote on a recent Gamasutra article, and total agree with this (especially if anyone else here has been keeping up with things for any decent length of time)..

(those are not my words, but the sentiment of many who've either attempted to get a deal in the past or just observed their behavior)

so, even though there may be some short term shifts... I see it really only strengthening Unity's position even further as they improve the tools, more 3rd parties provide solutions (like Vizio and others)...

 

In all the Unity 5 VS Unreal 3 debate, people seem to forget the new CryEngine deal at $10 "without" royalties.

I could have a team of 5 people working on a AAA game for 2 years and not approach the price of a single desktop-only license of Unity Pro.

How is Unity Pro better financially again?

 

Because you'd actually make a game with Unity? As opposed to that demented makeyoucryengine, that only until recently started allowing giving people a chance to publish a game and not on a fluke chance it would get approved. Have you actually used it?

 

First of all, we have very little information about that CE deal. It will DEFINITELY be very restricted somehow, perhaps with what features you may use, or how much revenue you can have.

Second, it's Cryengine. An engine that is hard to use and badly documented.

 

An engine that doesn't really give the the ability to use your own shaders either.

 

Productivity I'd think could be an issue. If you were less productive with CryEngine, you could end up with less product to sell and less income. I don't know if that's an issue, but I've heard some less than flattering things about CryEngine. If it is the case that you can be more productive with Unity, that could be far more significant than the license fees.

 

Yes. The editor was VERY easy to use. Im a programmer, but level design was a breeze. The C++/Source access is fantastic. The documentation + two books were more than enough. I personally found it far easier to use than UDK, which was a mess. (Lets change config/ini files to everytime we need to subclass something...).
CryEngine was much more natural. I think its difficulty is overstated.

Not really. We have just been spoiled by Unity. Back in the days of C++/OpenGL 3, things were really hard and undocumented...

I could live with that, since CryEngine generates shaders dynamically based on materials (and other) settings. Not sure how viable changing the source-code would be if one were to "really" need to change shaders somehow though.

 

yet... you are here

 

Of course. I "do" use Unity as well. I am the developer of "Visual Actions" after-all. All of Raed Entertainment's current products were made in Unity.

Besides, the new commercial CryEngine isn't out yet.

 

It was LAST WEEK. It's buggy and full of absolutely ridiculous typos.

 

First off, I love Unity and have no plans to switch anytime soon.

But, this is a very real challenge from UE4. And, if it's enough to fill this forum with devs thinking about switching, then you can bet that it has the potential to attract a ton of the new developers Unity would otherwise have in the bag. Unity knows this.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned much is this: I think we're about to see an influx of new developers interested in Oculus Rift support, especially with Facebook throwing $$$ in the VR arena and with Sony announcing Project Morpheus. VR is about to become a very hot topic. That's something that's a little harder to get to with Unity requiring the Pro license. UE4 has it built in. There are a lot of people in the VR community who are passing on Unity because of the barrier to entry, and that's a shame. I hope Unity has this on their radar.

I understand UE4's royalty model, but as an indie I'd much prefer to steer clear of it. I'd like to be able to release a game without having the added office work of paying out 5% royalties on sub $1000 monthly revenue streams for the rest of my life. It is more common for indie developers to make less and wear multiple hats; I don't want to add administrative duties on top of that. It may be the idea is worse than the reality. Who knows, maybe I'll change my mind, but for now count that as a win for Unity.

For me, I'd mainly like to see the Pro-Mobile integration included in the Pro license, rather than broken into so many add-ons, or made cheaper.

Cost, time and features. That's what it comes down to. All said, Unity will need to respond, and I'm sure they will.

I don't see myself switching anytime soon, but I'm testing the waters...because I love shiny things.