New 3DS and New 3DS XL get Unity support
Nintendo's handhelds open up to millions of independent developers
The New 3DS and New 3DS XL are now a much more hospitable environment for independent game developers, with Unity now offering official support for Nintendo's popular handheld platforms.
The announcement was made yesterday at the Unite conference in Tokyo, and there could be no more appropriate location: the various iterations of the 3DS hardware have been the dominant console platforms in Japan for several years, a situation that the launch of PlayStation 4 has done little to change so far.
Unity platform support will be available to Nintendo's first and third-party studios, as well as Unity's growing community of 4 million developers all over the world.
And the 3DS is one of the few remaining platforms to build that bridge with Unity. Nintendo said that it was discussing the possibility of doing so as early as March last year, despite the engine already having an agreement in place for the Wii U.
The New 3DS and New 3DS XL were launched in Japan in October last year, with the global rollout starting early in 2015.