March 9 2010Unity 3 coming soon!
In the Unite 2009 conference keynote we promised you that Unity would be picking up speed, and it has: Unity has become a powerhouse in the game industry and beyond. Nobody else is as active in democratizing sweet game technology to as many developers, and enabling them to target as many consumers. Unity has been used by well over 100,000 developers of all shapes and sizes to create thousands of games and other interactive 3D content that has touched over 40 million people.
We’re moving fast. Our engineering team now consists of 36 people (up from some 12 or so a year ago), and they are firing on all cylinders. We’ve continually released major updates with tons of features over the last years. We also started working on an Xbox 360 port, and recently blogged that our iPhone team is working on iPad support.
But those teams are just a handful of our people! So what else have we been up to? Thousands of code check ins have been done, many subsystems reworked, leading technologies integrated in Unity, and a massive automated testing suite implemented so that we can move as fast as we can.
In fact, here’s a historical graph of our code checkins:
As a project grows developers tend to check in less frequently, so the actual slope of work being done is much steeper.
Until today it was all hush-hush, but now we’re finally ready to announce our plans. Let it be known: for the last year we’ve been working on the next major release: the uber-cool Unity 3: unity3d.com/unity/coming-soon/unity-3
So far the only time frame we’ve promised is “summer 2010″, but we’ll be giving early beta access – and a discount – to anyone who pre-orders.
Also, we’ve just announced that Unity will add support for iPad, Android, Xbox 360, and PS3! That’s the kind of “author once, deploy anywhere” that has remained a developer’s wet dream for years. And not just from “one codebase”, but from one heck of a unified and polished IDE paired with the industry’s best asset pipeline!
I hope you’ll stick around with us, we’re only just getting started!
PS. Because we’re unifying the core Unity products with Unity iPhone (and all the other deployment targets too) the upgrade rules are a bit complicated and we haven’t done the best job at explaining them. We are working on this, please bear with us as we are inundated with questions – we will sort this all out and make it as clear as it can be in the near future.
Mark Lipper said on March 10th, 2010 at 1:09 am:
All I can say is, add desktop Linux and you’ve gained another paying customer. Not much and probably not even a blip on your radar but, well, just had to get that out in the air.
Other than that, great work, looking forward to the new release (from the sidelines).
Martin Schultz said on March 10th, 2010 at 1:28 am:
This is sooo awesome. One of those features like Beast alone would have been enough for a big update, but no, those guys did it again and put way way more into the next version. Fantastic job.
Thomas said on March 10th, 2010 at 2:47 am:
You are really doing an amazing job there.
Thanks for all the hard work guys/girls.
Martijn (Tinus) Zandvliet said on March 10th, 2010 at 2:52 am:
Brilliant! I absolutely adore the work you guys do.
Jack Freeman said on March 10th, 2010 at 3:17 am:
Awesome! You guys kick ass.
diamondTearz said on March 10th, 2010 at 3:58 am:
You guys continue to blow me away. That demo is beautiful and the news of the platform expansion is mind-blowing. The developers are on fire and inertia is growing. I can’t wait to see what the community does with this. Thanks again.
M
Reset said on March 10th, 2010 at 4:31 am:
Drool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ashkan said on March 10th, 2010 at 5:07 am:
great job guys!
i am sure that there are many many other features and small improvements that you did not talked about. does unified editor means that we can make iphone games on windows without xcode? what about dx11 support and what about windows phone 7 series? i know that it’s in early stages but it’s really available
Pete said on March 10th, 2010 at 5:11 am:
Totally awesome!
Nintari said on March 10th, 2010 at 7:18 am:
Exciting!
Claus A. said on March 10th, 2010 at 11:53 am:
I think you’ve just gained a new customer!
Jashan said on March 10th, 2010 at 12:57 pm:
It’s just awesome!!! 21 pages in just 2 days. That’s what I call “customer response”
Now for some forum statistics:
Unity 1.0 release announcement: 3 postings (2 of David
)
): 486 postings (33 pages … over about 2 months)
): 516 postings (35 pages)
Unity 1.1 release announcement: 20 postings (about 1 1/2 pages)
Unity 1.2 release announcement: 9 postings
Unity 1.5 release announcement: 62 postings (5 pages)
Unity 1.6 release announcement: 63 postings
Unity 2.0 summer announcement: 291 postings (20 pages)
Unity 2.0 release announcement: 99 postings (7 pages)
Unity 2.1 release announcement: 106 postings (8 pages)
Unity iPhone summer announcement: 639 postings (43 pages … over a period of 9 months)
Unity Wii release announcement: 35 postings (3 pages)
Unity 2.5 summer announcement (Windows is coming
Unity 2.5 release announcement: 281 postings (19 pages)
Unity 2.6 release announcement (and Unity’s now free
It’ll be fun to watch how this goes on.
Unity FTW!!!
wangshibo said on March 10th, 2010 at 3:44 pm:
什么时候unity编辑器才能支持中文呢？
when is the unity editor can support Chinese?
Matthew said on March 10th, 2010 at 4:25 pm:
Could you clarify if support for Xbox360, Android or PS3 will cost extra with Unity 3 like it costs extra for the iPhone support now?
Hamzeh Shabani said on March 10th, 2010 at 4:27 pm:
hi,oh my god its great!!!!!!!!!!
surry i have a question,when is the unity editor can support persian(farsi) and arabic (right to left languages)?
cocokool said on March 10th, 2010 at 6:13 pm:
Hum… expect to pay 1.500 for each platform. What a deal ()sarcasm
dontnormally said on March 10th, 2010 at 6:24 pm:
I think now would be a wonderful time to remember us Unity Indie owners and maybe throw a bone our way towards Unity 3? Or maybe let us/me into the beta program?
Gert-Jan said on March 10th, 2010 at 7:17 pm:
Looking forward to the beta and the final release! Another step forward! Good job guys!
Ashkan said on March 10th, 2010 at 7:26 pm:
@jashan
you rock man!!!
Joachim Ante said on March 11th, 2010 at 1:06 am:
>surry i have a question,when is the unity editor can support persian(farsi) and arabic (right to left languages)?
Unity 3.0 will come with full on IME support and a new Font rendering backend.
thilinkalin said on March 11th, 2010 at 2:02 am:
omg endelig nogle danskere der kan finde ud af at gøre noget rigtig
glæder mig til at prøve det ud når det kommer 
kan ikke vente
Fernando Zapata said on March 11th, 2010 at 2:36 am:
Awesome, you guys rock
! Getting my pre-order now =)
Flashtech123 said on March 11th, 2010 at 11:54 am:
This is the best!
Unity 3.0 support is also WebGL?, Or bring a new player plug-in?
When the full version comes out? and they also exist in German?
Thanks
Flashtech123 said on March 11th, 2010 at 11:57 am:
This is the best!
Unity 3.0 support is also WebGL?, Or bring a new player plug-in?
Will Direct X11 and OpenGL (WebGL) support?
X-Box360 and Playstation 3 support?
When the full version comes out? and they also exist in German?
Thanks
Flashtech123 said on March 11th, 2010 at 1:45 pm:
Why no DirectX11 support?
Trinigy (http://www.trinigy.net/) but also supports DirectX11.
And WebGL should also be supported before others do, and Unity will no longer keep up. or?
Thanks
Ashkan said on March 11th, 2010 at 4:37 pm:
@Joachim
thank you!!! you rock!!! what is the font rendering backend? IME makes no difference for Persian (Farsi) or Arabic languages?
Arrendondo said on March 12th, 2010 at 5:35 am:
@uashan
you rock mam!!!;
Bob said on March 12th, 2010 at 6:08 am:
I’m working on a game for the iPad. Does anyone know if the iPhone Pro license will work for the iPad or if there will be a separate iPad license that you have to buy?
Ashkan said on March 12th, 2010 at 10:50 am:
@Bob
as Tom said in forum page for unity 3 it’s an extra feature in unity iphone.
Summer said on March 12th, 2010 at 1:20 pm:
I’m so exciting !!
I want buy it myself!
please release ASAP, I cannot wait ~~~~!!!
DrHotBunz said on March 13th, 2010 at 5:06 am:
I just paid over $1000 for 2.6 and don’t even get a single free upgrade ? That sucks. I was expecting 2.7, 2.8 and 2.9 before I had to pay again….
Lake Place Productions, LLC said on March 13th, 2010 at 5:35 am:
Just got a copy! Go Unity 3D.
Tim said on March 13th, 2010 at 12:58 pm:
Is there any news on the Android pricing? Will it be the same as the iPhone one?
Dendrophile said on March 14th, 2010 at 6:16 pm:
@DrHotBunz
I don’t think anyone has said there won’t still be 2.x upgrades. 3.0 won’t arrive until the summer.
@Ashkan
We’ll use native PC/Mac/etc font rendering, so anything the PC/Mac can do you’ll be able to do from Unity.
Ashkan said on March 14th, 2010 at 11:08 pm:
@dendrophile
oh there are 2 sets of functions for text rendering windows. as you know better than me you should use uniscribe.dll in windows to dender all texts in all languages correctly. hopefully you’ll create a better GUI system that supports multilingual texts and right to left well.
keep on good work guys.
Phillipe said on March 15th, 2010 at 5:51 pm:
I don´t get it!! I know there is a LOT of new features and the best plugins and support ever! but i already paid $1500 and i will need to pay another $500 to get the update and who never buy a version of unity will pay only $1200? Don´t you think is something wrong?
Koblavi said on March 16th, 2010 at 12:51 am:
Well David and is team have done it Again. I mean 2.5 to 2.6 was like a Major leap. but 2.6 to 3.0 that’s just Amazing!! on so many levels.
I think Unity is (consciously or unconsciously) spearheading the future of Game Development where one does not have code 10000 lines to see 1 pixel. It’s gonna be like how RAD tools (VS.Net etc…) have almost snatched application development from C/C++.
Unity is rapidly moving from being a Prototyping IDE to and AAA Game Development IDE. I am proud to say that with release of Unity 3… you’ll coin a new acronym in IT… R.G.D.-> Rapid Game Development. and Unity will be the leading platform for that.
Thank you for the wonderful work.
Pix'nlove said on March 16th, 2010 at 1:45 am:
“Hope you’ll stick around with us, we’re only just getting started!”
This is really and mean really exiting new!!!
Juan said on March 16th, 2010 at 3:04 pm:
@wangshibo on 3.0
Juan said on March 16th, 2010 at 3:05 pm:
+
Dell Lawrence said on March 16th, 2010 at 8:50 pm:
I will be buying this… I keep watching the demo of Unity 3 over and over again. Congrats to the 3D DEMO GODS who built that! One question? Why so many fire hydrants! LOL!! Seriously that demo made me drool. Saving money now to buy this incredible RGD tool. (I agree with Koblavi on Rapid Game Dev so I borrowed the acronym!)
This is an amazing company. To everyone who works there. Don’t ever stop being as creative and daring as you guys are now. To add Beast was brilliant but to add everything you are adding to this new release makes this the new paradigm in game dev. You are changing lives in a positive way by giving us the tools to make our dreams into a reality. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!!!
Joe Woynillowicz said on March 17th, 2010 at 6:41 am:
I was at GDC and got to play with the 3.0 build and check out your new demos, and I must say it looks like it will be a monumental release. We’re really looking forward to working with 3.0 as we migrate away from all of our in-house tech and start building everything with Unity.
Kristen said on March 19th, 2010 at 4:51 pm:
Cant wait to see 3.0 on my computer
Jedimace1 said on March 22nd, 2010 at 10:10 pm:
Awesome new features! Can’t wait to get this. I have a few questions, though. Does “physics features” refer to a few small fixes, or a major, much needed complete physics update to modern physics? Which features will be available in the basic version of Unity? Will the iPad be supported when the iPad is released? And, finally, as you mentioned above, how will licensing work?
KTH said on April 1st, 2010 at 11:19 pm:
Our company makes cross platform games, but most of our development platforms are using (k)Ubuntu Linux. I’m really amazed by what you’ve done with Unity. If you could support as a development platform it would be a great reason for us to purchase a unity version. If you want to make Linux more profitable for you, you could do this… Require a pro version to get a copy of the Linux binaries. That gives an incentive for users to purchase the pro version.
A web player for Linux would also be a great asset, but ironically it is probably not as important to me or our other developers as being able to run the development platform on Linux. On the other hand, Linux support for the web player would increase the number of people we can reach.
Albert said on April 1st, 2010 at 11:40 pm:
I have been using UDK for two months, and udk is really great to make powerful graaphics game, Unity is aimed for casual game, If Unity 3 will support The Beast, that means will be the same powerful than UDK ?…..
RoyalGuy said on April 13th, 2010 at 4:06 pm:
Albert, i think that is pretty possible…
btw, the image splash looks like a bit gta IV…. interesting…
Paolo Oliverio said on May 5th, 2010 at 2:31 am:
I expected to see streets populated by some character and with some kind of gameplay.
2.x doesn’t have too much skinned mesh power even outperforming other software implementations, but at least now we can get some serious lighting on characters without fear about pixel lights performances.
Strange that so many engine demo set in cityes,large landscapes and don’t show characters.But don’t cry I will be happy to donate character models for a future demo.
p.s. even garage games showed a city with only one character probably it’s a trend.
My wishlist of features for 3.x will be:
-headless linux server build.
-possibility to create asset bundles at runtime for procedural and user uploaded content in normal build, headless server one or as a static or dynamic library.
-A fast and easy way to render customized character in one draw call.
-Vertex texture fetch to exploit some gpu potential over the slower scripting.
-Tts capabilites on webplayer that cannot access it over plugins(even mono doesn’t support system.speech .net i relly miss microsoft Anne).
-Direct loading of dds or loading of separate mipmap levels for textures and cubemaps.
-Runtime Cubemap Compression to compress cubemap generated at runtime on web player.
-asyncronous procedural texture generation(to generate asset on webplayer clientside mapzone like) support some kind of extra map generation from diffuse one ( crazybump like ).
-Partnership with an advertising company to publish in game advertising on webplayer in % revenue share on free versions and 100% user on pro versions.
-native Navigation mesh support(everyone hates waypoints or at least i hate them enough for everyone).
-native static and dynamic decal sys.
- spherical harmonics ambient therm on dynamic object as probably Beast just support it(seen on udk)but even a faker interpolated directional ambient color like source engine can work.
-More GUi power, batched one, cached?!?No visual editor just more powerfull.
-Cloth physic i don’t need it but many people care about those stupid things over the olds and goods fakes.
I don’t think people will read all this or the other 100k features on my long version wish list.
Patrick Lorio said on May 9th, 2010 at 9:49 am:
Does Unity 3 pro have the console support or is it like wii’s console support presently, where you have to buy another license?
My question, with a xbox 360 devkit, and Unity 3 pro, will I be able to run and test my game on the xbox 360?
Tom Higgins said on May 10th, 2010 at 7:25 pm:
Let’s catch up on some comments from the last month+…
@Jedimace1: there are some hefty physics improvements coming, more than just tweaks and we’re not yet announcing the [free]/Pro feature split information, you’ll have to wait just a bit longer for specifics on those. Finally, licensing of Unity is not changing with the 3.0 release.
@Albert: we think that Unity offers a compelling package that you should choose instead of UDK, especially once Unity 3 is shipped (still “Summer 2010″, no specific release dates just yet).
@Paolo: it’s a pre-alpha demo video, there’s an entirely separate demo that we’re using at conferences/events where you’re a soldier moving through a city environment (different city/theme), so there is at least one in the works.
@Patrick: Unity’s support of consoles will remain as it is today, you will need to own Unity Pro, be an authorized developer with a dev kit for your console(s) of choice and then license our engine on a per-title basis. The cost structure for console licensing is definitely open for negotiation though so we can, and do, work with folks considering multiple titles or platforms (if interested, contact our sales crew at sales@unity3d.com).
Paul Oh said on May 11th, 2010 at 6:00 pm:
Hello Dears,
This is Paul from Korea, RICHIT corp. One of Unity’s reseller.
So I wait for the release of the unity 3.
SAMSUNG existing in Korea market, but a mobile 1st leader.
Now you can rest assured that this is not Samsung Iphone lunched in the Korea market Also, when they become available ipad that its products are no longer in Korea is not a sales safety zone for SAMSUNG & LG.
Korean customers would like escape from domestic mobile market.
So much is expected, soon I’m crazy to want to see unity 3. ^_^
AwesomeDude said on June 24th, 2010 at 3:34 pm:
awesome, unity 3 looks so awesome, this is more awesome then other awesome game engines, how do you guys make awesome stuff this awesome, im blown away by awesomeness because this is so awesome
THIS IS SO AWESOME sorry i have to say it again AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME
AwesomeDude