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Tag: Unity

  • Verizon and Unity Partner On 5G, MEC and Digital Experiences

    Verizon and Unity Partner On 5G, MEC and Digital Experiences

    Verizon has announced it is partnering with Unity to help drive 5G-powered digital experiences and mobile edge computing (MEC).

    5G is the next generation of wireless technology that promises revolutionary speeds, opening up a whole new world of digital possibilities. Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), gaming, autonomous driving and much more all benefit from the speeds 5G can provide. Edge computing and MEC is another area where 5G can make a big difference, allowing data to be processed faster at or near the point of collection.

    Verizon has been investing heavily in its 5G network. Until recently, it had primarily focused on the fastest variety of 5G, the high-band mmWave, which Verizon calls Ultra Wideband. The company has also spent big at the FCC auction for coveted mid-band spectrum, often considered the sweet spot for 5G, offering a good combination of speed and coverage.

    Unity, on the other hand, is the maker of the popular Unity game engine, as well as the creator of the popular Fortnite game. Unity’s engine is also one of the leading VR platforms. This portfolio makes Unity a natural choice for Verizon to partner with to provide 5G content.

    “We are entering an era of technology-led disruption where 5G and MEC will not only transform the full enterprise lifecycle, it will change the way consumers experience gaming and entertainment,” said Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business. “Every business is accelerating the shift to digital for their employees, supply chain or end-customer experience. So whether you’re an enterprise reimaging how you do business using predictive real time insights, computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence, or a mobile gamer who simply wants to download the hottest new game in seconds and enjoy data intensive, multiplayer games conventionally reserved for consoles, the future is happening right now.”

    “We know the world is demanding high-speed, AAA content, whether it’s an educational augmented reality application or a robot running a simulation of a digital twin,” said Ryan Peterson, VP, Solutions, at Unity. “5G is the key piece for us to facilitate these real-time 3D experiences broadly and to better meet the demands of the real-time economy.”

    This partnership further illustrates the emphasis wireless companies are placing on providing content that aligns with their core business. In October, T-Mobile announced TVision, its foray into streaming TV. Similarly, AT&T has its own streaming service. In an industry known for its churn — where customers switch from one company to another — providing high-quality digital experiences may play a big role in increasing brand loyalty.

     

    Image Credit: Unity & Verizon

  • Amazon: AWS SDK for Unity Now Part of SDK for .NET

    Amazon: AWS SDK for Unity Now Part of SDK for .NET

    Amazon announced that AWS SDK for Unity is now part of AWS SDK for .NET.

    Last year, the company announced the general availability of AWS SDK for Unity, but has since added support for other AWS services including Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), AWS Lambda, and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS).

    “The AWS SDK for Unity was created from a fork of the AWS SDK for .NET and supported only a subset of its features,” says Amazon’s Karthik Saligrama. “As the AWS SDK for Unity added support for more features, we realized that forking did not allow us to simultaneously release patches or new features on the AWS SDK for .NET and the AWS SDK for Unity. It was also difficult to accept pull requests from the open source community without diverging from the AWS SDK for .NET.”

    “Starting today, we are releasing to our github branch a preview version of the AWS SDK for .NET with Unity components,” Saligrama says. “Currently, the SDK can be built on Windows machines only. The branch contains test cases for all services supported on Unity, which can be run on Android, iOS, or on the Unity IDE.”

    Saligrama discusses changes made to ake the SDK easier to configure and use here. This includes AWSPrefab, releasing assemblies in the Unity package, releasing the source code under Apache license, and the SDK version being in sync with the AWS SDK for .NET version.

    Image via Amazon

  • Wii U To Get Over 50 Unity Titles, Engine Support Might Come To 3DS

    Over the last few years, Unity has become one of the most prominent game engines in the industry thanks to its low cost and universal compatibility. Nintendo even gives away the engine to authorized Wii U developers to help get them started on creating indie content for the system. The handout apparently worked as Nintendo claims to have a lot of indie content coming to the system.

    Speaking to Siliconera, Nintendo said that it has over 50 Unity games coming to the Wii U in the future. Nine of those games were on display at GDC last week and another 17 have already been submitted for approval. The games already submitted for approval will be out in the next two months. In all, the Wii U will be getting 26 indie titles built using Unity in the coming months. That’s a lot of indie content for a system that so far hasn’t been doing so hot.

    One of the upcoming Wii U unity titles is Ballpoint Universe – a shmup featuring unique hand-drawn visuals. It was released on the PC last year, but it’s now being ported to the Wii U thanks to the console’s Unity support. It’s one of many examples of Unity helping to bring unique indie experiences to a console that’s starving for content:

    In the same interview, Nintendo told Siliconera that it’s also investigating whether or not it can bring Unity to the 3DS. The engine already supports mobile platforms, like iOS and Android, so 3DS support seems like a natural fit for those who want to bring mobile content to Nintendo’s handheld. It would also make it easier for developers to port existing titles to the platform. The 3DS isn’t exactly hurting for content in the same way the Wii U is, but it would certainly be nice to see a Nintendo Download with more than one or two 3DS games.

    Besides Unity, Nintendo is also developing a new series of tools called the Nintendo Web Framework. The tools will allow developers to build HTML5 games for the Wii U that can be played through the console’s Web browser. It’s probably not something you’ll see being used often, but it’s a nice alternative nonetheless.

    Image via Nintendo

  • All Indie Developers On Xbox One Get Free Unity Licenses

    In an effort to get indie developers to make Wii U games, Nintendo offered free development tools, like a Unity license, in exchange for games. Now Microsoft’s indie program – ID@Xbox – is offering the same deal.

    Unity CEO David Helgason announced today that Microsoft has reached an agreement with the indie friendly engine to offer free Unity licenses to all members of its ID@Xbox program. In other words, indie developers who join Microsoft’s indie development program will get a free Unity license to use in developing indie titles for the Xbox One.

    Here’s the relevant part of the announcement:

    Unity and Microsoft will now be working together to bring the Xbox One deployment add-on to all developers registered with the ID@Xbox program at no cost to the developers. This is huge news and means that everyone that’s part of that program, not just partners to Microsoft Games Studios, will be able to take advantage of Unity to create awesome gaming experiences for the Xbox One. On top of this, a special Xbox One version of the Unity Pro tools are also being made available for these same developers at no cost.

    The Xbox One is a powerful platform and we’re building powerful tools to take advantage of all of the features that make it so special like the Kinect and SmartGlass. Production is well underway and is progressing faster than originally anticipated! Very early testing phases will begin soon with a broader beta program in 2014.

    It should be noted that the free Unity license will come in two forms. If you already have a Unity license for another platform, like Android, then the Xbox One license will be unlocked on your account upon your admission into the ID@Xbox program. If this is your first Unity license, you will be given an Xbox One-only license, and all other licenses for other platforms will be sold at a comparatively low cost like usual.

    It’s actually the latter license agreement that’s actually the most exciting for developers. Unity is a great cross platform engine, but developers do have to buy licenses for platform-specific tools. By releasing on Xbox One first, the developers may earn the money necessary to purchase the other licenses and port their titles to other platforms, like iOS, Android and other home consoles.

    The ID@Xbox self-publishing program on Xbox One is not yet live, but you can apply to be admitted into the program right now. Microsoft is currently giving preferential treatment to developers who have shipped a game, but it will open the program to anybody who has an Xbox One in the future. At that point, the free Unity license will come in handy for the thousands, if not millions, of gamers who want to dip their toe in the waters of game development.

    [Image: Xbox]

  • Facebook SDK For Android Gets Updated

    Facebook SDK For Android Gets Updated

    In mid-September, Facebook released a new iOS SDK to coincide with the release of iOS 7. The Android SDK will most likely receive a similar update later this month with the expected launch of Android 4.4, but developers can take advantage of a new SDK update now as well.

    Facebook announced this morning that its Android SDK has now been updated to version 3.5.2. It’s a minor update that includes a bug fix for a possible exception in activateApp() when running older versions of the Facebook app for Android. You can grab the newest version of the SDK here.

    As for other updates, Facebook announced earlier this week that it now offers new mobile app ads to developers. These new mobile app ads come in the following forms: Open Link, Use App, Shop Now, Watch Video, Listen Now, Book Now and Play Game. The hope is that these ads will drive further engagement with mobile apps that use Facebook’s mobile SDK.

    Facebook is also adding more insights to its App Insights page to include Login Dialog and App Center conversions. The former will keep track of the number of users who sign up for your app via Facebook while the latter will keep track of the number of users that are driven to your app through App Center. You can check out some best practices for Login Dialog here, and for App Center here.

    On a final note, Facebook has now released its talks at Unite regarding how game developers can integrate Facebook into their Unity applications through the Facebook SDK for Unity. There are three talks in total:

    Facebook SDK For Unity on iOS

    Facebook SDK for Unity on Android

    Facebook SDK for Unity on Facebook Canvas

    [Image: Facebook Developers]

  • Parse Reveals New Mobile Analytics Tools

    Parse Reveals New Mobile Analytics Tools

    If you use any kind of analytics in your mobile app, you just might use Parse. It’s one of the most popular mobile analytics platforms on the market, and the team behind it have announced some new tools that will make it even better.

    During its first annual Parse Developers Day, the company revealed five new tools that it has been developing over the past few months with its new owners at Facebook. There’s a little something for everyone here, including new analytics tools and even support for one of the fastest growing game engines available.

    The major release of the day is a new analytics tool called Custom Analytics. As the name implies, it will allow app developers to “track arbitrary events with an arbitrary set of dimensions.” The new tool joins the previously released Push Analytics and API requests tools that tracked user interactions with push notifications and the number of API requests going through Parse. You can find out more about Parse Analytics here.

    The other big release is the Parse SDK for Unity. For those unaware, Unity is one of the fastest-growing game engines that supports everything from game consoles and PC to mobile devices. Parse is solely interested in mobile devices, and the new SDK will allow developers to integrate its analytics platform into their Unity powered games. If you need help in setting it up, check out the documentation.

    Aside from Analytics, Parse also runs a service called Cloud Code that allows developers to run app code from Parse’s servers instead of their own. During the conference, Parse announced that two new Cloud Modules – Parse Image Cloud Module and Parse User Session Module – are now available in Cloud Code. You can check ’em out here.

    Finally, Parse announced a new tool called Background Jobs that takes care of any recurring jobs that your app needs to accomplish. The tool can be set to accomplish these jobs at any time interval via the dashboard. You can read up on the new tool here.

    With these new tools, Parse is on track to becoming one of the most widely used mobile analytics platforms on the planet. It might be able to reach that point sooner rather than later if Facebook continues pushing the platform as strong as it has been.

    [Image: Parse Analytics]

  • Unity Game Engine to End Flash Support

    It appears that Apple has been right all along that Flash is not the future of the web. Unity this week announced that it will be phasing out support for Adobe Flash development.

    Unity is a multi-platform game engine that is capable of producing games for consoles, PCs, touch devices, and the web. In particular, the engine has been used to create some of the most popular mobile games in recent years, such as Rovio’s Bad Piggies.

    David Helgason, CEO of Unity, announced in a blog post on Tuesday that the company has stopped selling Flash development licenses.

    Unity will continue to support its existing Flash customers “throughout the 4.x cycle.” Bug fixes will be made in future Unity 4.x iterations, but further development for the Unity engine on the platform has ceased.

    The decision was made, Helgason stated, because of Adobe. Helgason called recent versions of Flash unstable and stated that, “We don’t see Adobe being firmly committed to the future development of Flash.” He also pointed out that Adobe has cancelled the Flash Player Next project.

    Instead of Flash, Unity will be concentrating its development on its own Unity Web Player. Helgason stated that the Unity Web Player is installed on over 200 million computers and is used by one-third of all “Facebook gamers.”

  • Unity 4 Early Access Program Available To Windows 8 Developers

    In just a few years, Unity has become a premier game development engine that has encouraged indie developers all around the world to create expansive titles for PC, consoles and mobile. With Unity 4, the engine is ready to take on big budget game development, and Windows 8 is invited along for the ride.

    Unity announced that Unity 4.2 is now available to Windows 8 developers as part of a Windows Store apps early access program. Developers can use the new tools available in Unity 4.2 to create games for both x86 and ARM-based systems. It also supports DirectX 11 so games can take advantage of all the newest technologies available to developers.

    “With the beta of the Unity 4 game engine for Windows 8, the entire Unity community of 1.5 million developers can get started quickly building games for Windows 8,” said John Richards, Senior Director of Windows Apps Marketing for Microsoft. “The number of high quality Unity-based games already created for PC, Xbox and mobile devices is impressive, and we’re excited to see the amazing games the community brings to Windows 8 with Unity.”

    As part of the early access program, developers will be able to port games to the Windows Store platform using the Unity 4.2 beta builds. All registered participants in the beta will receive a two month trial license that will unlock Windows Store app platform support in the Unity toolset.

    It should be noted that any games created for Windows 8 using this beta will not be available for commercial release. It’s meant to help developers get a feel for developing with Unity on the Windows 8 platform. Those who wish to commercially release their games on Windows 8 using Unity 4.2 will want to buy a full license when the public commercial release of Unity comes out. If you can’t wait for that, you can contact the Unity Sales team to work out a deal to publish a game using the Unity 4.2 beta.

  • Amazon Adds Unity Plugins To Its Game Development Tools

    Mark my words – Unity is going to be the next big game engine that everybody uses. Unreal Engine is still going to be the go to development suite for big budget console and PC games, but more and more mobile developers will be turning to Unity for its ease of use and wide array of user created assets. The folks at Amazon obviously realize this, and are taking preemptive measures to make it easy for Unity developers to craft games for its platforms.

    Amazon announced today that it has launched free Unity plugins for its In-App Purchasing and GameCircle APIs. Developers with Unity games on Kindle Fire devices will now be able to easily add these features to their games without having to write a lot of additional code.

    “Unity is one of the most popular tools for building mobile games,” said Mike Frazzini, Director of Amazon Games. “Amazon’s In-App Purchasing and GameCircle APIs help developers reach more customers, keep them engaged, and make more money. Every week millions of customers are playing GameCircle enabled games and are able to compare scores and compete against friends. We want to make it as easy as possible for developers to quickly integrate these features and our new, free plugins make it incredibly simple to do so for anyone using Unity.”

    Keith Sheperd, Founder and CEO of Imangi Studios, said that the GameCircle plugin for Unity was incredibly easy to integrate into their hit game Temple Run. He said that normally integrating GameCircle would have taken his team a few days, but the new plugins reduced the integration time to a few hours.

    Developers building Unity games for Kindle devices will want to use these plugins. They’re free and available to any developer that want them. You can grab the plugins over at Amazon’s developer site. Now get out there and start crafting the next mobile masterpiece.

  • Windows 8 Phone Might Be Getting Serious About Gaming

    Windows 8 Phones are still not out yet, but support for the platform is growing. To be really successful, Microsoft is going to need to get game developers on board. People flock to iOS and Android for the gaming experience and that experience just isn’t there yet on Windows Phone 7 for the most part. Windows Phone 8 might just change that with a little help from a certain game engine.

    Unity has been announced for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. For those who don’t know, Unity is an immensely popular game engine that runs on just about every platform including iOS and Android. It’s been used to develop countless games and the engine is complimented by thousands of add-ons from the community.

    “Our mission at Unity has always been to provide solutions for developers to effortlessly bring their work to as many different platforms as possible,” said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. “The Unity community has been asking for access to Windows Phones and have been eagerly anticipating the release of Windows 8. We’re happy to announce that we will support both.”

    The real strength of Unity is that it unifies platforms under a single engine. It’s incredibly easy to port projects built on Unity between different platforms. Developers can make a game in Unity for iOS and easily port it to both Android and Windows Phone 8. From there, they can also bring the game to PC, Xbox 360, PS3 and other platforms.

    “We are excited that the Unity community will now be given the opportunity to develop world class titles for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8,” said John Richards, Senior Director, Windows App Marketing at Microsoft. “The number of high quality Unity-authored games for the PC, Xbox, and mobile devices already created is staggering and we’re looking forward to seeing these products appear in the Windows Store and the Windows Phone Marketplace.”

    Developers interested in getting their hands on Unity for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 won’t have to wait for long. The engine update will be coming with the Unity 4 release cycle later this year.

  • Adobe Flash Player 11.2 Puts Games At The Forefront

    Adobe Flash Player 11.2 Puts Games At The Forefront

    Adobe published a white paper last month that outlined their plans for the Flash Player in the future. One of the things mentioned was that the company was going to put an increased focus on gaming applications for Flash and AIR. They took their first step in that direction yesterday.

    Adobe announced yesterday the release of Flash Player 11.2 and AIR 3.2. These two software tools will help developers leverage Adobe’s tools to create games across browsers and mobile devices. The real reason you’re here though is for the specifics of what these updated platforms bring to developers.

    Adobe AIR 3.2 brings more of the Flash platform to mobile devices and PCs. With this new update, developers can now play around with Stage3D graphics technology which enables 1000x faster native GPU rendering performance. This is the same tech that’s in the desktop version of Flash Player, but now that power is coming to smartphones.

    AIR 3.2 also has native support for multitouch, camera/mic and accelerometers. Adobe also promises that AIR will run across all Android devices, negating the need to build separate versions of a game for different devices.

    Flash Player 11.2 is a few steps ahead of AIR 3.2 in that it already had Stage3D technology for a while now. The additions coming now are more about house keeping and making sure Flash Player can create core gaming experiences. The new features hitting Flash Player 11.2 include mouse lock, relative coordinates, and right and middle-click support. They are also extending hardware driver support back to 2008 so more computers can take advantage of the new features.

    There’s another feature coming to Flash Player 11.2 that should be far more exciting for developers wanting to create core experiences on the platform. Adobe announced a new tier for Flash Player that adds premium features for games. This allows Flash Player to render modern console-quality graphics in browser.

    Alongside the announcement of this new tier for development, Adobe also announced a collaboration with Unity Technologies, creators of the Unity game engine. Unity is one of the premier game engines that can publish to multiple devices including consoles, PC, mobile devices and Flash. Developers can use these technologies to publish core games on browsers.

    All these new features coming to Flash Player 11.2 must cost quite a pretty penny, right? Not so, says Adobe, as they are making all Flash Player premium features free for content published before August 1. Of course, you can’t really make a triple-A browser based game built on Flash in just a few months. What about those who publish after August 1? Adobe is still going to cut you a sweet deal. You will have to license the premium features, but Adobe won’t begin charging you until you reach $50,000 in revenue. Unity has a similar licensing scheme so it’s a win-win for everybody, especially developers.

    If Unity isn’t your thing, Epic also announced Flash compatibility with Unreal Engine 3 in a demo video during GDC. With Unity and Unreal Engine both running on Flash and more most likely on the way, Flash could be the next big platform for the Web as far as core content goes.

    With the announcement of BrowserQuest yesterday running on HTML5, I can almost see a divide coming to the browser gaming market. HTML5 is going to be used to power the casual and non-graphic intensive titles that we currently play in browsers, whilst Flash will be powering the core experiences like first-person shooters and expansive action adventure titles in full 3D.

    What do you think? Is Flash Player leading the charge in core gaming content for the Web? Let us know in the comments.

    [h/t: The Verge]