12 ms·

Going forward, Unity devs will need Unity Pro to publish on consoles

112 points by q_andrew 5y ago

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
1800/person/seat is a pretty minimal cost, at least in the US. Even if you're paying your people 40k per year, it's a 5%-ish increase in costs, at most. Probably much less once you factor everything else in. I'd be interested to know how many non-hobbyist devs are seriously affected by this.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  As a ps3 owner who was considering that it might be fun to make a simple game or utility it's a total non-starter. Of course I can make a game for free on my desktop, laptop or phone and have many options available. But I was literally just last night thinking about making something for use with a controller on the sofa and bookmarked Unity for further consideration. I'd rather use Godot but I don't think that works with consoles at all. It sounds like this still works for older versions of Unity? I am not imagining anything elaborate/commercial. The ps3 is not the best computer (or even console) I own, but it's one I like and use daily, even if just for a few minutes to play an old game or watch streaming video. Edit: after looking around Unity's website it seems they're just not catering to hobbyists at all any more which I guess makes sense from their business perspective. Oh well.
  - dmytroi 5y ago
    Unity is completely irrelevant here, your first question should be "Will Sony give me the software and the hardware to make a PS3 game/software?" and answer in 2021 will most likely be hard no because PS3 is so old at this point (remember that retail console is not a devkit nor a testkit). Which only leaves homebrew toolchains to explore, and they are not supported by any of big engines today.
    - anigbrowl 5y ago
      I already knew the answer to that, but up until recently the free/cheap tier Unity let you output for ps3.
      - andybak 5y ago
        But how do you install on the actual hardware without an official dev kit? If you're just previewing on PC then nothing has changed.
        bsagdiyev 5y ago
        The PS3 security is completely broken at this point so that’s a moot point. You don’t need a dev kit.
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        I don't think this answers the question. Is there actually a guide showing anyone having been able to click build in a recent version of Unity and run the output on a PS3? Because I'd be shocked if that actually worked, back in the PS3 days I'm pretty sure Sony was shipping modified builds of Unity just like Nintendo
  - andrewmcwatters 5y ago
    Yes, the price is very affordable for even small independent studios knowing that engine licensing costs are one of your biggest non-labor expenses, but the price is also set high enough that an individual will easily have it out of budget. Only hardware is marginally more expensive, and only sometimes. I find their pricing very well calibrated.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    Looks like the dream isnot completely dead: https://wololo.net/2019/09/24/a-look-at-udk-ultimate-a-modified-unreal-engine-3-sdk-with-support-for-exporting-to-hacked-ps3-and-xbox-360-consoles-recently-beefed-up-with-ps3hen-support-and-main-developer-to-soon-showcase-an-or/ https://wololo.net/2019/09/24/a-look-at-udk-ultimate-a-modif... (Also, talk about putting the whole story in the URL...)
- xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
  Basically zero, but it's definitely awful marketing to devs who imagine themselves successful. Unity sure is encouraging folks to move to Unreal or Godot lately. If you're porting to consoles and making at least 100k/yr then this is a drop in the bucket.
- everyone 5y ago
  You only need one seat I think also. Just for when you're building to console (At least that's the way it used to be when you could only build to certain platforms on pro) Eg. If I was doing a build I'd just use the seat and if my colleague had it i'd ask him to relinquish it.)
  - qwytw 5y ago
    The license doesn't allow doing that, you can't really mix free and pro on the same project (also if you work with multiple people probably the company has > 100k revenue). Of course Unity doesn't really have any good way to enforce this...
- ngold 5y ago
  I do some mobile unity game development. Personally I would expect it to cost more to get games on console.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Not everywhere pays their people as well as the US :). For a lot of countries with many Devs this is a fortune
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Thats a ton of money for something an indie dev won't even own or be able to possess once the subscription is up. Indie dev is super saturated. It's hard to make money without a ton of promo and virality. Yet another predatory subscription licensing model. Thank god Unreal Engine is open-source.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    Seems like these types of devs go to PC first anyway, since the cost of getting started there is so much less than consoles. I doubt anyone in the industry will be too broken up about it.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    UE is source available but it is not open source. You owe royalties if your game makes over a million. It's a nice model though.
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      Dude if UE makes me a millie I would happily hand them 5% for it, considering that would be all I owe them, ever. Especially for all the free assets they provide. But right now, where certainties aren't...
      - spywaregorilla 5y ago
        Agreed. It's a very good model for building their customer relationship. I would be happy to give them 50k. It is revenues however, not profit. This might not look as favorable if you're running a moderately sized studio with payroll costs.
numbsafari 5y ago
Interesting point of comparison to, say, iOS development, which costs $99/yr, full stop, not per-seat.
- chrisBob 5y ago
  That is obviously not a fair comparison. Apple's developer fee is there to create a little bit of a filter and to help reinforce the legal agreement for getting access to pre-release stuff, and running code on your own hardware. The fee probably doesn't even cover the overhead on the program. Apple makes their money through the App Store and selling hardware. Unity is getting all of their money from licensing their software.
  - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    It doesn't really do any of those things, though. It's an arbitrary fee. Look at Google's Play Store fee by comparison. While I agree it's not a fair comparison, the Unity fee at least provides substantially more value than Apple's, like covering the publishing process for multiple console platforms, which is almost always relatively expensive.
    - qwytw 5y ago
      Google doesn't really do a manual review of every submitted app (I don't know how many minutes/hours they spend on a single submission but I guess the cost of this alone might add up to more than $100 if the account is used to submit a lot of apps/new versions per year)
- Macha 5y ago
  $99/yr + 15% of first $1,000,000 + 30% of any revenue above that
  - munk-a 5y ago
    Which, just to do the math out - means that Apple is guaranteed to be cheaper as long as you make less than 12k. That math, of course, ignores platform hosting fees (i.e. Steam/EGS/GoG will take a chunk of profits as well on PC - and I have no idea what console fees are like). Assuming you're not doing it as a hobby the flat cost is far more economical unless you release a lemon in which case the scaling cost does minimize the losses at least.
theknocker 5y ago
Cool, unreal 5 is shaping up great.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
Unity makes a lot of moronic decisions imo. * You have to pay to remove the unity logo from your games. This causes low quality games to proudly show the unity logo and well funded games to hide it. * Very few devs are likely to release on console while on the free tier of unity pro but this has a daunting effect on the aspirational newbie, I guarantee. Lots of people have this silly habit of thinking about the monetary opportunity of their amazing solo indie game that will definitely never happen, but it still GETS THEM ON THE TOOL which is important * Needless to say, breaking their own networked multiplayer setup and not even having a working replacement. The engine really is fine, but the business is poorly run, and I feel that drives the trajectory of the engine downwards.
- dathinab 5y ago
  > *Very few devs are likely to release on console while on the free tier of unity pro but this has a daunting effect [..] this silly habit of thinking about the monetary opportunity of [..] I fully agree, the idea that my small irrelevant hobby game might end up somewhat successful and I might be able to sell it on console and be maybe able to live from and for it for ~1 year or so are quite tempting. On the other hand the idea that even if my hobby game gets successful I will most likely never be able to put it on console is quite off putting.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    If your hobby becomes successful can’t you then upgrade to pro and port to consoles?
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      A lot of people will want to push to consoles to begin with, not to PCs. It's still a good deal if you're successful. But it's $1,800 lost if you're not. That's a big number to some hopeful newbie.
    - dathinab 5y ago
      For a hobby game earning 1800 yearly in profited is a lot. Not even speaking about you having to put it up upfront and every year (I'm not sure if it's every year you still maintain or sell the game). I mean typical prices for mini hobby games are 5-10 at most 20, if we go with 10 it means you would need to have already had 180 customers before publishing on a game console which is you only target e.g. the PlayStation is a problem. And sure that might not sound like much, but we are speaking about small hobby projects of often young people, potentially worried about how to pay their student loans or teen not yet earning money. And sure they probably will target Steam first. And sure in the sells aspects this doesn't matter for EA, but it will make more young people use different things for their first games. It's not about weather it is expensive, it's about it feeling expensive for the next generation. Furthermore when it doesn't matter from a sells perspective why increase the burden? Why not just reducing the "less expensive" limit from 200k revenue to 80k or so?
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animanoir 5y ago
Great publicity for Godot which i believe will get as heavy and important as Blender.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  You still need to pay for a devkit even with Godot, and be on good terms with Sony, Nintendo, Google and Microsoft, which give tier 1 preference to Unity.
  - everyone 5y ago
    Unity is the only 3rd party engine that can build to Nintendo switch (At least it was quite recently, not sure if its still the case)
    - vivty 5y ago
      Yoshi's Crafted World which appeared on March 29, 2019 was built using the UE4 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshi%27s_Crafted_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshi%27s_Crafted_World).
    - boterock 5y ago
      UE4 has been able to export to switch for a long time (Snake Pass notably released on switch, before any other console, 4 years ago) For Godot, there are companies that do the porting (presumably they developed their own interfacing layer), these services seem to be not very expensive, and one of the Godot founders runs one of these companies IIRC.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Exactly, this porting business model is quite common in the gaming industry, and one of the reasons why most studios don't really care about 3D APIs portability.
    - CraneWorm 5y ago
      solar2d is on the way to achieve this goal too
socialist_coder 5y ago
This is the least of Unity's problems. Unity doesn't dogfood their own engine. Unity does not develop any games themselves. This is completely unlike Unreal, who has always released games using their own engine. Unity doesn't do it, and it shows. Unity has a handful of features that either barely work or only work in some contrived prototype case. They still have 3 different rendering pipelines without clear direction on which you should use. They have this whole new game architecture (DOTS) but it seems like you should not use it. It's just there to confuse you. They have a new GUI coming soon? Maybe? Mobile builds are a complete clusterfuck with all the native code plugins you have to integrate. As soon as you get a few native code plugins (which every serious mobile game does), it takes several days of messing with your build pipeline to make things build properly on iOS and Android. And then you have to do it all over again every year to keep up with platform changes. They've also released a ton of plugins and features for AAA games and cinematics that are completely useless to indie devs and mobile devs. I would love to know what their revenue split looks like between mobile, AAA, indie, and everything else. From my perspective, they haven't done much the past 3 years to make mobile dev & indie dev better. Still no good webGL export if you care at all about load times. I'm not sure if they have just given up on this or what. The Unity Editor also just has weird problems sometimes. It gets exponentially worse if you have large projects too. This is why Unity never sees these problems because they only work with small prototypes. They have no "real" projects which can easily get into the 50+ gigabytes range. At that size of a project, you start to have more weird issues. Unity is still (usually) the best choice for mobile and indie, but man I wish they would just spend the time to make their own mobile game, see the many pain points, and fix them. I will say, they did create and release the Addressables system, which is a big improvement for resource loading on mobile. Also their acquisition of TextMeshPro and support of that plugin for rendering text, super good. Their shader graph editor is still WIP and tied into their rendering pipeline mess. Nested prefabs are also a huge improvement. If I was Unity, I would setup 2 internal game teams. One team building PC & console games, another team building mobile games. Build real games, release them on the app stores, and keep them updated for 2 years. Who cares if they don't make any money, that isn't the point. This is a realistic usage of the engine and it would expose problems that Unity doesn't seem to know about.
- socialist_coder 5y ago
pjmlp 5y ago
Sony, Nintendo, Google and Microsoft, give tier 1 preference to Unity anyway, so this will hardly matter for those that actually get to be allowed to rent a devkit. Not everyone that wants to develop for consoles gets the privilege to do so anyway, only when the game manages to win the hearts of publishers, and the company has a sound financial history to ensure being able to deliver the game.
literallyaduck 5y ago
When you hitch your wagon to someone else's horse you can't get mad when it goes in a direction you don't like.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  Sure you can.
  - droopyEyelids 5y ago
    The other day I got angry at my dog food bowl when I kicked it in the dark— and I'm the one who left it in the wrong place!
    - teekert 5y ago
      I’m calling the cops.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  Well, you can get mad, but your only real recourse is to unhitch your wagon. Most unity users won't do that, they don't have the resources or ability to make their own engines, and many are not even able to effectively use the reasonable competing engines like Unreal. Unity users are pretty much a captive market at this point. Really good business for Unity, probably not so good a situation for Unity users long term.
- nathanvanfleet 5y ago
  You just have to write your own engine nowadays. Yup. Maybe even make your own console. But don't write in someone else's language. This is the "deserved to be shot" argument of things. You just aren't allowed to complain somehow? Why not?
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    > But don't write in someone else's language. This is the "deserved to be shot" argument of things. Amen. Remember all those closed and proprietary "4GL" programming languages throughout the 1990s? And all the business software titles built using them? All gone now. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
thrower123 5y ago
I really don't understand why Microsoft hasn't bought Unity
halo 5y ago
This feels attempted shakedown of the console manufacturers to get them to pay for Unity for their licensees. Looks like Sony and Nintendo have coughed up while Microsoft have not. Not sure I can blame Microsoft for not wanting to pay.
Robotbeat 5y ago
I was about to use Unity for a project (for a larger organization) and had considered biting the bullet and buying Unity Pro… but I didn’t want to have my work turn to ash as soon as my side project ran out of funding and the license expired. Permanent licenses that you have to buy are one thing, but… Being forced into buying a subscription service (& legally being prevented from using the “community” version) just makes me way too hesitant to want to use the Unity environment. Especially for side projects (and if you can’t use it for side projects, you will be less likely to use it for main projects). If the project has a delay (pandemics happen, could have a medical problem, etc), then I risk running out of money for subscription. If it was just paying for maintenance, or for memory limitations, CPU count, or compilation speed, that’s one thing. But if all your work turns to ash if you don’t pay the fee… that’s just not an ecosystem I want to invest time and money in.
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  That reasoning is precisely why we switched form Autodesk 3ds max to Houdini. And then we were positively surprised by its power and have never looked back.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Eek.. will this apply to Oculus Quest too? That's also kinda a closed platform
- binarynate 5y ago
  No, Oculus Quest uses Unity's Android player and doesn't require a specialized console player.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Thanks, that's great to hear! I'm just learning Unity for this purpose (not to publish though but still...)
41209 5y ago
This is a pretty moot point. Realistically no one can develop for a console without having a significant amount of funding. Microsoft had an indie storefront a while ago , but it's essentially gone. I wasted hours , and 25$ trying to get my Unity game to build for Xbox S. The tools Microsoft has for hobby devs are just completely broken. Looking on the bright side with Steamdeck we might see even more great handheld PC games. I wish Godot was anywhere near Unity, but it's not. UDK melts my computer and I've never been able to do anything with it.
carlosrg 5y ago
Does this applies to UWP games (the ones you can run on Xbox with the Creators Program)? I was considering learning and doing some hobbyist games with Unity and Xbox.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  I wouldn't bother with UWP in that case. Now with GDK, the XBox has made quite clear that UWP is on the death row. https://github.com/microsoft/GDK https://github.com/microsoft/GDK => How does the GDK compare to the Microsoft Universal Windows Platform (UWP)? "UWP apps and games are community-supported only; partners inside Xbox managed programs (Xbox, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Game Streaming) should use Microsoft Win32 + GDK." I expect a fate similar to XNA, given that HoloLens also deprecated UWP.
  - carlosrg 5y ago
    I don’t think GDK is a valid alternative to UWP for hobbyist development. > Xbox console development requires the “Microsoft Game Development Kit with Xbox Extensions (GDKX)”. Games will need to retarget and rebuild for Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S with the GDKX installed. > The GDKX is currently only available under confidential license within an NDA Xbox program (e.g. ID@Xbox). Given that games are mostly DirectX with maybe 5% of UWP-dependent code I personally don’t mind if they deprecate it at some time in the future.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      The idea is that you develop with GDK, then you are already 80% there when applying for an XBox submission. HoloLens (aka Windows Mixed Reality) has already moved away from UWP, you are supposed to use Unity, Unreal or OpenXR.
vincentpants 5y ago
Sounds like this is specifically for the switch. Which I’m finding to be a great platform for indie devs IMO.
traspler 5y ago
I‘m not a game dev but we used it for an AR feature where I worked. We only needed 2 seats, so not a big customer. There have been some stupid interactions with Unity: - Pestering us for weeks about urgently needing to arrange a call with us and repeatedly refusing to tell us what it is about over Email, turns out one of devs didn‘t activate his seat and another user created an account with his work email an they thought we were abusing the license. - Back then they offered build server licenses but there was nearly nothing in the docs about it, only „call us“. So we did and we had to arrange a call with one of their partners advising us on our use use (dynamically generating assets over an API). All of this boiled down to: 5 Instance license for the price of a normal seat. Why all of this required hours of my and my co-workers time in calls is beyond me. All if this could have been done with like 4 mails max. It‘s not only Unity‘s issue. I can‘t even create an AWS account anymore without someone calling me to talk about my „use-cases“. This insistence on personal calls and account managers is such a drag. Just feature your contact points prominently on your page and explain your offer publicly. I‘d rather have someone competent answer my mails than talk to someone who is just going to schedule another 3 calls because they are only sales people.
devwastaken 5y ago
More reasons to not learn unity. Free tier is to learn the product and test on various hardware. Do you know how many students rely on free tier to learn? Who exactly is selling games for consoles without a unity pro license? That's breaking the free license.

112 points by q_andrew 5y ago

1800/person/seat is a pretty minimal cost, at least in the US. Even if you're paying your people 40k per year, it's a 5%-ish increase in costs, at most. Probably much less once you factor everything else in. I'd be interested to know how many non-hobbyist devs are seriously affected by this.

anigbrowl 5y ago
As a ps3 owner who was considering that it might be fun to make a simple game or utility it's a total non-starter. Of course I can make a game for free on my desktop, laptop or phone and have many options available. But I was literally just last night thinking about making something for use with a controller on the sofa and bookmarked Unity for further consideration. I'd rather use Godot but I don't think that works with consoles at all. It sounds like this still works for older versions of Unity? I am not imagining anything elaborate/commercial. The ps3 is not the best computer (or even console) I own, but it's one I like and use daily, even if just for a few minutes to play an old game or watch streaming video. Edit: after looking around Unity's website it seems they're just not catering to hobbyists at all any more which I guess makes sense from their business perspective. Oh well.
- dmytroi 5y ago
  Unity is completely irrelevant here, your first question should be "Will Sony give me the software and the hardware to make a PS3 game/software?" and answer in 2021 will most likely be hard no because PS3 is so old at this point (remember that retail console is not a devkit nor a testkit). Which only leaves homebrew toolchains to explore, and they are not supported by any of big engines today.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    I already knew the answer to that, but up until recently the free/cheap tier Unity let you output for ps3.
    - andybak 5y ago
      But how do you install on the actual hardware without an official dev kit? If you're just previewing on PC then nothing has changed.
      - bsagdiyev 5y ago
        The PS3 security is completely broken at this point so that’s a moot point. You don’t need a dev kit.
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        I don't think this answers the question. Is there actually a guide showing anyone having been able to click build in a recent version of Unity and run the output on a PS3? Because I'd be shocked if that actually worked, back in the PS3 days I'm pretty sure Sony was shipping modified builds of Unity just like Nintendo
- andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  Yes, the price is very affordable for even small independent studios knowing that engine licensing costs are one of your biggest non-labor expenses, but the price is also set high enough that an individual will easily have it out of budget. Only hardware is marginally more expensive, and only sometimes. I find their pricing very well calibrated.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Looks like the dream isnot completely dead: https://wololo.net/2019/09/24/a-look-at-udk-ultimate-a-modified-unreal-engine-3-sdk-with-support-for-exporting-to-hacked-ps3-and-xbox-360-consoles-recently-beefed-up-with-ps3hen-support-and-main-developer-to-soon-showcase-an-or/ https://wololo.net/2019/09/24/a-look-at-udk-ultimate-a-modif... (Also, talk about putting the whole story in the URL...)
xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
Basically zero, but it's definitely awful marketing to devs who imagine themselves successful. Unity sure is encouraging folks to move to Unreal or Godot lately. If you're porting to consoles and making at least 100k/yr then this is a drop in the bucket.
everyone 5y ago
You only need one seat I think also. Just for when you're building to console (At least that's the way it used to be when you could only build to certain platforms on pro) Eg. If I was doing a build I'd just use the seat and if my colleague had it i'd ask him to relinquish it.)
- qwytw 5y ago
  The license doesn't allow doing that, you can't really mix free and pro on the same project (also if you work with multiple people probably the company has > 100k revenue). Of course Unity doesn't really have any good way to enforce this...
ngold 5y ago
I do some mobile unity game development. Personally I would expect it to cost more to get games on console.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Not everywhere pays their people as well as the US :). For a lot of countries with many Devs this is a fortune
tomc1985 5y ago
Thats a ton of money for something an indie dev won't even own or be able to possess once the subscription is up. Indie dev is super saturated. It's hard to make money without a ton of promo and virality. Yet another predatory subscription licensing model. Thank god Unreal Engine is open-source.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  Seems like these types of devs go to PC first anyway, since the cost of getting started there is so much less than consoles. I doubt anyone in the industry will be too broken up about it.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  UE is source available but it is not open source. You owe royalties if your game makes over a million. It's a nice model though.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    Dude if UE makes me a millie I would happily hand them 5% for it, considering that would be all I owe them, ever. Especially for all the free assets they provide. But right now, where certainties aren't...
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      Agreed. It's a very good model for building their customer relationship. I would be happy to give them 50k. It is revenues however, not profit. This might not look as favorable if you're running a moderately sized studio with payroll costs.

numbsafari 5y ago

Interesting point of comparison to, say, iOS development, which costs $99/yr, full stop, not per-seat.

chrisBob 5y ago
That is obviously not a fair comparison. Apple's developer fee is there to create a little bit of a filter and to help reinforce the legal agreement for getting access to pre-release stuff, and running code on your own hardware. The fee probably doesn't even cover the overhead on the program. Apple makes their money through the App Store and selling hardware. Unity is getting all of their money from licensing their software.
- xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
  It doesn't really do any of those things, though. It's an arbitrary fee. Look at Google's Play Store fee by comparison. While I agree it's not a fair comparison, the Unity fee at least provides substantially more value than Apple's, like covering the publishing process for multiple console platforms, which is almost always relatively expensive.
  - qwytw 5y ago
    Google doesn't really do a manual review of every submitted app (I don't know how many minutes/hours they spend on a single submission but I guess the cost of this alone might add up to more than $100 if the account is used to submit a lot of apps/new versions per year)
Macha 5y ago
$99/yr + 15% of first $1,000,000 + 30% of any revenue above that
- munk-a 5y ago
  Which, just to do the math out - means that Apple is guaranteed to be cheaper as long as you make less than 12k. That math, of course, ignores platform hosting fees (i.e. Steam/EGS/GoG will take a chunk of profits as well on PC - and I have no idea what console fees are like). Assuming you're not doing it as a hobby the flat cost is far more economical unless you release a lemon in which case the scaling cost does minimize the losses at least.

theknocker 5y ago

Cool, unreal 5 is shaping up great.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

Unity makes a lot of moronic decisions imo. * You have to pay to remove the unity logo from your games. This causes low quality games to proudly show the unity logo and well funded games to hide it. * Very few devs are likely to release on console while on the free tier of unity pro but this has a daunting effect on the aspirational newbie, I guarantee. Lots of people have this silly habit of thinking about the monetary opportunity of their amazing solo indie game that will definitely never happen, but it still GETS THEM ON THE TOOL which is important * Needless to say, breaking their own networked multiplayer setup and not even having a working replacement. The engine really is fine, but the business is poorly run, and I feel that drives the trajectory of the engine downwards.

dathinab 5y ago
> *Very few devs are likely to release on console while on the free tier of unity pro but this has a daunting effect [..] this silly habit of thinking about the monetary opportunity of [..] I fully agree, the idea that my small irrelevant hobby game might end up somewhat successful and I might be able to sell it on console and be maybe able to live from and for it for ~1 year or so are quite tempting. On the other hand the idea that even if my hobby game gets successful I will most likely never be able to put it on console is quite off putting.
- newsclues 5y ago
  If your hobby becomes successful can’t you then upgrade to pro and port to consoles?
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    A lot of people will want to push to consoles to begin with, not to PCs. It's still a good deal if you're successful. But it's $1,800 lost if you're not. That's a big number to some hopeful newbie.
  - dathinab 5y ago
    For a hobby game earning 1800 yearly in profited is a lot. Not even speaking about you having to put it up upfront and every year (I'm not sure if it's every year you still maintain or sell the game). I mean typical prices for mini hobby games are 5-10 at most 20, if we go with 10 it means you would need to have already had 180 customers before publishing on a game console which is you only target e.g. the PlayStation is a problem. And sure that might not sound like much, but we are speaking about small hobby projects of often young people, potentially worried about how to pay their student loans or teen not yet earning money. And sure they probably will target Steam first. And sure in the sells aspects this doesn't matter for EA, but it will make more young people use different things for their first games. It's not about weather it is expensive, it's about it feeling expensive for the next generation. Furthermore when it doesn't matter from a sells perspective why increase the burden? Why not just reducing the "less expensive" limit from 200k revenue to 80k or so?

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animanoir 5y ago

Great publicity for Godot which i believe will get as heavy and important as Blender.

pjmlp 5y ago
You still need to pay for a devkit even with Godot, and be on good terms with Sony, Nintendo, Google and Microsoft, which give tier 1 preference to Unity.
- everyone 5y ago
  Unity is the only 3rd party engine that can build to Nintendo switch (At least it was quite recently, not sure if its still the case)
  - vivty 5y ago
    Yoshi's Crafted World which appeared on March 29, 2019 was built using the UE4 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshi%27s_Crafted_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshi%27s_Crafted_World).
  - boterock 5y ago
    UE4 has been able to export to switch for a long time (Snake Pass notably released on switch, before any other console, 4 years ago) For Godot, there are companies that do the porting (presumably they developed their own interfacing layer), these services seem to be not very expensive, and one of the Godot founders runs one of these companies IIRC.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Exactly, this porting business model is quite common in the gaming industry, and one of the reasons why most studios don't really care about 3D APIs portability.
  - CraneWorm 5y ago
    solar2d is on the way to achieve this goal too

socialist_coder 5y ago

This is the least of Unity's problems. Unity doesn't dogfood their own engine. Unity does not develop any games themselves. This is completely unlike Unreal, who has always released games using their own engine. Unity doesn't do it, and it shows. Unity has a handful of features that either barely work or only work in some contrived prototype case. They still have 3 different rendering pipelines without clear direction on which you should use. They have this whole new game architecture (DOTS) but it seems like you should not use it. It's just there to confuse you. They have a new GUI coming soon? Maybe? Mobile builds are a complete clusterfuck with all the native code plugins you have to integrate. As soon as you get a few native code plugins (which every serious mobile game does), it takes several days of messing with your build pipeline to make things build properly on iOS and Android. And then you have to do it all over again every year to keep up with platform changes. They've also released a ton of plugins and features for AAA games and cinematics that are completely useless to indie devs and mobile devs. I would love to know what their revenue split looks like between mobile, AAA, indie, and everything else. From my perspective, they haven't done much the past 3 years to make mobile dev & indie dev better. Still no good webGL export if you care at all about load times. I'm not sure if they have just given up on this or what. The Unity Editor also just has weird problems sometimes. It gets exponentially worse if you have large projects too. This is why Unity never sees these problems because they only work with small prototypes. They have no "real" projects which can easily get into the 50+ gigabytes range. At that size of a project, you start to have more weird issues. Unity is still (usually) the best choice for mobile and indie, but man I wish they would just spend the time to make their own mobile game, see the many pain points, and fix them. I will say, they did create and release the Addressables system, which is a big improvement for resource loading on mobile. Also their acquisition of TextMeshPro and support of that plugin for rendering text, super good. Their shader graph editor is still WIP and tied into their rendering pipeline mess. Nested prefabs are also a huge improvement. If I was Unity, I would setup 2 internal game teams. One team building PC & console games, another team building mobile games. Build real games, release them on the app stores, and keep them updated for 2 years. Who cares if they don't make any money, that isn't the point. This is a realistic usage of the engine and it would expose problems that Unity doesn't seem to know about.

socialist_coder 5y ago

pjmlp 5y ago

Sony, Nintendo, Google and Microsoft, give tier 1 preference to Unity anyway, so this will hardly matter for those that actually get to be allowed to rent a devkit. Not everyone that wants to develop for consoles gets the privilege to do so anyway, only when the game manages to win the hearts of publishers, and the company has a sound financial history to ensure being able to deliver the game.

literallyaduck 5y ago

When you hitch your wagon to someone else's horse you can't get mad when it goes in a direction you don't like.

TigeriusKirk 5y ago
Sure you can.
- droopyEyelids 5y ago
  The other day I got angry at my dog food bowl when I kicked it in the dark— and I'm the one who left it in the wrong place!
  - teekert 5y ago
    I’m calling the cops.
bilbo0s 5y ago
Well, you can get mad, but your only real recourse is to unhitch your wagon. Most unity users won't do that, they don't have the resources or ability to make their own engines, and many are not even able to effectively use the reasonable competing engines like Unreal. Unity users are pretty much a captive market at this point. Really good business for Unity, probably not so good a situation for Unity users long term.
nathanvanfleet 5y ago
You just have to write your own engine nowadays. Yup. Maybe even make your own console. But don't write in someone else's language. This is the "deserved to be shot" argument of things. You just aren't allowed to complain somehow? Why not?
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > But don't write in someone else's language. This is the "deserved to be shot" argument of things. Amen. Remember all those closed and proprietary "4GL" programming languages throughout the 1990s? And all the business software titles built using them? All gone now. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

thrower123 5y ago

I really don't understand why Microsoft hasn't bought Unity

halo 5y ago

This feels attempted shakedown of the console manufacturers to get them to pay for Unity for their licensees. Looks like Sony and Nintendo have coughed up while Microsoft have not. Not sure I can blame Microsoft for not wanting to pay.

Robotbeat 5y ago

I was about to use Unity for a project (for a larger organization) and had considered biting the bullet and buying Unity Pro… but I didn’t want to have my work turn to ash as soon as my side project ran out of funding and the license expired. Permanent licenses that you have to buy are one thing, but… Being forced into buying a subscription service (& legally being prevented from using the “community” version) just makes me way too hesitant to want to use the Unity environment. Especially for side projects (and if you can’t use it for side projects, you will be less likely to use it for main projects). If the project has a delay (pandemics happen, could have a medical problem, etc), then I risk running out of money for subscription. If it was just paying for maintenance, or for memory limitations, CPU count, or compilation speed, that’s one thing. But if all your work turns to ash if you don’t pay the fee… that’s just not an ecosystem I want to invest time and money in.

fxtentacle 5y ago
That reasoning is precisely why we switched form Autodesk 3ds max to Houdini. And then we were positively surprised by its power and have never looked back.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Eek.. will this apply to Oculus Quest too? That's also kinda a closed platform

binarynate 5y ago
No, Oculus Quest uses Unity's Android player and doesn't require a specialized console player.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Thanks, that's great to hear! I'm just learning Unity for this purpose (not to publish though but still...)

41209 5y ago

This is a pretty moot point. Realistically no one can develop for a console without having a significant amount of funding. Microsoft had an indie storefront a while ago , but it's essentially gone. I wasted hours , and 25$ trying to get my Unity game to build for Xbox S. The tools Microsoft has for hobby devs are just completely broken. Looking on the bright side with Steamdeck we might see even more great handheld PC games. I wish Godot was anywhere near Unity, but it's not. UDK melts my computer and I've never been able to do anything with it.

carlosrg 5y ago

Does this applies to UWP games (the ones you can run on Xbox with the Creators Program)? I was considering learning and doing some hobbyist games with Unity and Xbox.

pjmlp 5y ago
I wouldn't bother with UWP in that case. Now with GDK, the XBox has made quite clear that UWP is on the death row. https://github.com/microsoft/GDK https://github.com/microsoft/GDK => How does the GDK compare to the Microsoft Universal Windows Platform (UWP)? "UWP apps and games are community-supported only; partners inside Xbox managed programs (Xbox, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Game Streaming) should use Microsoft Win32 + GDK." I expect a fate similar to XNA, given that HoloLens also deprecated UWP.
- carlosrg 5y ago
  I don’t think GDK is a valid alternative to UWP for hobbyist development. > Xbox console development requires the “Microsoft Game Development Kit with Xbox Extensions (GDKX)”. Games will need to retarget and rebuild for Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S with the GDKX installed. > The GDKX is currently only available under confidential license within an NDA Xbox program (e.g. ID@Xbox). Given that games are mostly DirectX with maybe 5% of UWP-dependent code I personally don’t mind if they deprecate it at some time in the future.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    The idea is that you develop with GDK, then you are already 80% there when applying for an XBox submission. HoloLens (aka Windows Mixed Reality) has already moved away from UWP, you are supposed to use Unity, Unreal or OpenXR.

vincentpants 5y ago

Sounds like this is specifically for the switch. Which I’m finding to be a great platform for indie devs IMO.

traspler 5y ago

I‘m not a game dev but we used it for an AR feature where I worked. We only needed 2 seats, so not a big customer. There have been some stupid interactions with Unity: - Pestering us for weeks about urgently needing to arrange a call with us and repeatedly refusing to tell us what it is about over Email, turns out one of devs didn‘t activate his seat and another user created an account with his work email an they thought we were abusing the license. - Back then they offered build server licenses but there was nearly nothing in the docs about it, only „call us“. So we did and we had to arrange a call with one of their partners advising us on our use use (dynamically generating assets over an API). All of this boiled down to: 5 Instance license for the price of a normal seat. Why all of this required hours of my and my co-workers time in calls is beyond me. All if this could have been done with like 4 mails max. It‘s not only Unity‘s issue. I can‘t even create an AWS account anymore without someone calling me to talk about my „use-cases“. This insistence on personal calls and account managers is such a drag. Just feature your contact points prominently on your page and explain your offer publicly. I‘d rather have someone competent answer my mails than talk to someone who is just going to schedule another 3 calls because they are only sales people.

devwastaken 5y ago

More reasons to not learn unity. Free tier is to learn the product and test on various hardware. Do you know how many students rely on free tier to learn? Who exactly is selling games for consoles without a unity pro license? That's breaking the free license.