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Unite Europe ‘16 Keynote Previews New Services & Tools

May 31, 2016 in Community | 5 min. read
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Unite Europe 2016 is off and running! We’re excited to spend the next three days learning, networking and connecting with the community here in Amsterdam. Things kicked off today with our keynote so read on for highlights and be sure to follow @Unity3d for more updates throughout the week.

The Keynote began with a quick snapshot of Unity’s history since 2005. CEO John Riccitiello ran us through the last 11 years from mac only product to supporting export to over 25 different target devices.  We’ve grown the platform, through new products such as ads and analytics, invested in graphics and performance, and made sure to anticipate future needs with support for AR and VR.   All the while, holding to the founding principles of democratizing development, solving hard problems and making developers successful.  The growth has been phenomenal, and through it all the founders and company remained true to the guiding principles.

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We all know, mobile is huge, and its trajectory has been been insane.  For developers, it’s a must. In Q1 of 2016, Unity saw 4.2 Billion installs of games made with unity across 1.7 Billion unique devices worldwide.  Whether it’s adding multiplayer and social to your game or making minute to minute optimization of lifetime value of your players by using ads and IAP, mobile still represents an enormous opportunity for Developers.  

We debuted Part 2 of Adam, a live, rendered in real-time demonstration of the Unity engine’s capabilities that shows just how amazing and realistic your games can look.

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Created with a small team, the short film was created to highlight what can be done with Unity. Demos like adam are a great way for us to keep in touch with what our developers are experiencing, as well as highlight the cool things you can do. Additional information and the full video, will be available soon.

Because we sometimes like to show sneak peeks, we introduced a new tool code named “LookDev”, aimed at improving artist workflow and production quality by allowing artists to validate their physically based rendering (PBR) assets. Artists can load an asset and easily inspect and check it under various lighting conditions (lighting condition represented by high dynamic range image [HDRI]).  “LookDev” will arrive with Unity 5.5 beta.  

We also talked about the exciting areas of AR and VR.  You may remember our earlier communications about the gap of disappointment, it’s the slower than expected start to the AR/VR revolution.  We still believe the next 2-3 years are all about figuring out what works, learning the new language of AR/VR and technology advances. That said, over the long term, we think this will be even bigger than people think. Later in the keynote, we showed our EditorVR concept, it’s amazing stuff, checkout the video to see some of the new things we’re doing.

John Cheng, General Manager for Analytics, graced the stage to explain that with data insights, developers can color in players profiles to truly understand their complex personas. Assisted by Lucas Meijer, Technical Director, they demonstrated how you can explore Ads & IAP revenue data, player behavior and understand issues thanks to the funnel analyser and heap mapper tool.  With those insights, developers can begin to understand what works and what doesn’t. All available in the Unity Analytics product.   Want to see where you might be losing players? Understand what your players look like? What countries, devices or operating systems you need to pay attention to? Unity Analytics... Done.

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Unity Ads had Jule Shumaker walking us through some off the best practices on how to make ads part of the core game loop, explaining how  you can use Unity ads to not only make money, but also boost user engagement.  We’re helping developers funnel their analytics into ads so they can establish the best monetization strategies possible. By using the Unity platform you can create a cycle of engagement, retention and monetization for your games.  Don’t believe it? Well, in 2015, we paid out more to publishers than was paid to us. Saara Bergström from NextGames took the stage to share their experience and success with “The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land” and “Compass Point: West” on making Ads truly part of the core game loop, resulting in driving up their revenue on average by 6 cents per player  .

Arisa Scott, product manager for Developer Services joined us to show the latest on Unity Collaborate. Currently in beta, the service makes your life easier to deal with  the cumbersome process of pulling other people into your projects. You do all your project sharing/management/collaboration directly in the editor.  It’s simple and easy to use and you can sign up right now at www.unity3d.com/collaborate

Lastly, we introduced Unity Connect, a new talent marketplace bringing together Unity artists, developers and creators with opportunities at studios and companies of all sizes. Users can establish a professional presence, message others, and discover jobs and projects. Studios in need can quickly and easily find developers with the just the right skillset. Unity Connect is currently in closed beta, but you can pre-register for the next beta phase here: http://response.unity3d.com/ConnectBeta

Also,in case you missed it, we announced new subscription products which are designed to provide simplified, more affordable access to the latest Unity tech. For more information visit the dedicated blog post and FAQ for more.

It’s was an amazing keynote and a great show.  Don’t forget, you can see the video here.

May 31, 2016 in Community | 5 min. read

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