4 ms·

Partnership between Unity and Google

73 points by PhilipA 8y ago

tmpz22 8y ago
So Unity is moving their own infrastructure to Google Cloud, Google and Unity are collab'ing on a large open source initiative coming out this Summer, and Google is integrating Google cloud features directly into Unity. I wonder if this will create a trap for new game developers to ONLY use google services for networking, by virtue of various plugins, frameworks, and tutorials, which abstract everything until you start to scale and your stuck with the bill and no viable means of switching to another vendor.
- TrainedMonkey 8y ago
  And by a sheer coincidence that would make it a lot easier to develop games on android.
- funkaster 8y ago
  Not really. Most of the services will be released open source, and they are not tied to the GCP, so you could use your own infra if that's something you would like. I think the first such service to be released will be matchmaking. Multiplay is also cloud agnostic, although it uses Google by default. Source: I work at Unity.
  - jay_kyburz 8y ago
    Hey funkaster! I have a prototype MP game I am working on right now using HLAPI. I host a few other web games on GC already. How easy is it to set up a dedicated server right now that I can run my game on? Documented anywhere? Edit: to clarify, I don't need matchmaking at this stage, would be happy to hard code an IP:Port and have a button connect to it directly.
    - funkaster 8y ago
      Hey! A lot of the connected games folks are in Berlin right now, for the conference. I'll ping them because they might have a better answer for you (I work at Analytics). If you want, shoot me an email: rolando at unity3d.com and I'll try to contact you with the right team.
andrewingram 8y ago
Is this tangential to what Improbable is building with Spatial OS, or potentially a competitor?
icu 8y ago
Seems like a missed opportunity for Microsoft's Azure... afaik a lot of Unity games are in C# which seems like a stronger fit than Google. Maybe Google sees this as a synergistic move with games on the Play Store?
- megaman22 8y ago
  I'm kind of surprised Microsoft has never made a serious push to buy Unity. I know that I would be happy to be able to use Core and more modern C# than Unity's rather old version of Mono.
  - icu 8y ago
    Well they still might. Nothing I've read so far about the Unity/Google alliance makes me think that it's impossible, just unlikely. The Microsoft M&A team will obviously be busy with GitHub but I would be surprised if no one there thought of it already. It does however seem to me like Microsoft know that Window's dominance is on the wane and they are pushing to be a software developer's 'tool' vendor. Considering how important Unity is to game development, from grass roots up to big triple A games, it does seem like an aquision target.
- Reedx 8y ago
  > afaik a lot of Unity games are in C# Yep, actually by far most of them are C#. These days you would only use C#. (Boo was deprecated a long time ago, and their version of Javascript is following suit)
- wildpeaks 8y ago
  Especially as I seem to recall that Visual Studio is now the recommended editor in Unity 2018, so it would have made sense to pick Microsoft for this as well.
funkaster 8y ago
for reference, here's the announcement on the Unity side: https://unity3d.com/connectedgames https://unity3d.com/connectedgames
ralusek 8y ago
For those unaware, I'm sure this is in competition with AWS's partnership with CryEngine. https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/
- sieabahlpark 8y ago
  Which is a terrible engine but makes thing beautiful.
- droidist2 8y ago
  So now it's time for Microsoft to partner with Unreal I guess?
kotlin 8y ago
Unity editor comes with Google Analytics and you can't even disable it in the free version. They're also collecting information from games built with Unity. I feel Google just wants more data and Unity is already okay with that.
esturk 8y ago
It's interesting they mentioned "...navigating 3D space in VR..." Because this leads me to think that Waymo's driving simations are written in Unity. As oppose to say Uber whose simulation appears to be written in Unreal from their demo in GDC.
- mort96 8y ago
  That seems to be a pretty weak link? Literally every VR game involves some amount of navigating 3D spaces.

73 points by PhilipA 8y ago

So Unity is moving their own infrastructure to Google Cloud, Google and Unity are collab'ing on a large open source initiative coming out this Summer, and Google is integrating Google cloud features directly into Unity. I wonder if this will create a trap for new game developers to ONLY use google services for networking, by virtue of various plugins, frameworks, and tutorials, which abstract everything until you start to scale and your stuck with the bill and no viable means of switching to another vendor.

TrainedMonkey 8y ago
And by a sheer coincidence that would make it a lot easier to develop games on android.
funkaster 8y ago
Not really. Most of the services will be released open source, and they are not tied to the GCP, so you could use your own infra if that's something you would like. I think the first such service to be released will be matchmaking. Multiplay is also cloud agnostic, although it uses Google by default. Source: I work at Unity.
- jay_kyburz 8y ago
  Hey funkaster! I have a prototype MP game I am working on right now using HLAPI. I host a few other web games on GC already. How easy is it to set up a dedicated server right now that I can run my game on? Documented anywhere? Edit: to clarify, I don't need matchmaking at this stage, would be happy to hard code an IP:Port and have a button connect to it directly.
  - funkaster 8y ago
    Hey! A lot of the connected games folks are in Berlin right now, for the conference. I'll ping them because they might have a better answer for you (I work at Analytics). If you want, shoot me an email: rolando at unity3d.com and I'll try to contact you with the right team.

andrewingram 8y ago

Is this tangential to what Improbable is building with Spatial OS, or potentially a competitor?

icu 8y ago

Seems like a missed opportunity for Microsoft's Azure... afaik a lot of Unity games are in C# which seems like a stronger fit than Google. Maybe Google sees this as a synergistic move with games on the Play Store?

megaman22 8y ago
I'm kind of surprised Microsoft has never made a serious push to buy Unity. I know that I would be happy to be able to use Core and more modern C# than Unity's rather old version of Mono.
- icu 8y ago
  Well they still might. Nothing I've read so far about the Unity/Google alliance makes me think that it's impossible, just unlikely. The Microsoft M&A team will obviously be busy with GitHub but I would be surprised if no one there thought of it already. It does however seem to me like Microsoft know that Window's dominance is on the wane and they are pushing to be a software developer's 'tool' vendor. Considering how important Unity is to game development, from grass roots up to big triple A games, it does seem like an aquision target.
Reedx 8y ago
> afaik a lot of Unity games are in C# Yep, actually by far most of them are C#. These days you would only use C#. (Boo was deprecated a long time ago, and their version of Javascript is following suit)
wildpeaks 8y ago
Especially as I seem to recall that Visual Studio is now the recommended editor in Unity 2018, so it would have made sense to pick Microsoft for this as well.

funkaster 8y ago

for reference, here's the announcement on the Unity side: https://unity3d.com/connectedgames https://unity3d.com/connectedgames

ralusek 8y ago

For those unaware, I'm sure this is in competition with AWS's partnership with CryEngine. https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/

sieabahlpark 8y ago
Which is a terrible engine but makes thing beautiful.
droidist2 8y ago
So now it's time for Microsoft to partner with Unreal I guess?

kotlin 8y ago

Unity editor comes with Google Analytics and you can't even disable it in the free version. They're also collecting information from games built with Unity. I feel Google just wants more data and Unity is already okay with that.

esturk 8y ago

It's interesting they mentioned "...navigating 3D space in VR..." Because this leads me to think that Waymo's driving simations are written in Unity. As oppose to say Uber whose simulation appears to be written in Unreal from their demo in GDC.

mort96 8y ago
That seems to be a pretty weak link? Literally every VR game involves some amount of navigating 3D spaces.