Unite 2009 - Unity Conference
Unity's user base nearly triples since last month's conference keynote.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – November 9, 2009 – Unity Technologies – the leading provider of multi-platform development for Web, PC, Mac, Wii™ console and iPhone – today announced that attendance at Unite 2009, the company’s third annual developer conference, was up 125 percent and that its user base has increased by 158 percent to 33,500 registered users since the conference’s opening keynote on October 28, 2009 due to the overwhelming demand for its interactive content solutions.
During the opening keynote, Unity Technologies' CEO David Helgason made three major announcements:
The availability of the feature-packed Unity (formerly known as Unity Indie and priced at $199) at no cost at http://unity3d.com/unity/download to make it possible for all developers to get access to the best development platform available The availability of version 2.6 of the Unity Platform which has more than 100 enhancements and improvements, including full support for external versioning tools such as Subversion or Perforce, richer graphical capabilities and performance optimizations Upcoming support for Microsoft Xbox 360 “Unite 2009 really showed us what big strides we had made during the last year. The crowd was a wonderful cross-section of the community – from industry luminaries to indie developers,” said Helgason. “And the step we took to finally make Unity free was so logical; it remains our mission to take something as advanced as Unity and make it available to everyone.”Helgason's vision of offering best of breed tools to everyone by making Unity free was complimented by a follow up keynote by Richard Hilleman, Chief Creative Director of Electronic Arts. Hilleman spoke about the need for accessible and inclusive experiences, that can be played in small blocks of time, and which can persist across a number of devices such as a user's work computer, mobile phone and home computer or game console – a strategy that Electronic Arts is already pursuing by using Unity for their upcoming Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online which was demoed during the keynote.
Other conference highlights included sessions on the iPhone and social network ecologies; deep technical sessions on topics such as Unity's GUI system and pipelines for creating streaming asset bundles; and examples of Unity integration with Facebook and Flash.
Unite 2009 was held October 27-30 in San Francisco. To view the keynote and for more information about Unite, go to http://unity3d.com/unite.
About Unity Technologies
Headquartered in San Francisco, Unity Technologies enables game developers of all sizes to get their game made faster and more efficiently across a variety of platforms. With 33,500 registered users worldwide, including Electronic Arts, Lego and the Cartoon Network, the Unity engine is platform agnostic and significantly expands the reach for developers. As a fully supported deployment platform, developers can now use Unity to drive development of the best games on iPhone, Mac and PC as well as the Wii console. For more information about Unity Technologies, visit http://unity3d.com/.