State Of Play: Unity Technologies

Tversky acknowledges that Union is "in part" a response to the increasing difficulty in finding success on the App Store - the most popular platform among Unity's vast community of commercial users. Union structures its deals with platform holders to include "preferred marketing slots and other opportunities."

"They're incentivised to make our content fly," he says. "Videogames have always been a hits driven business. The rise of the direct-to-consumer platforms like iOS has sort of increased that, because all of a sudden you have much more access and the barriers to entry have gotten lower."

"We can kind of democratise that, at least for our developers on these newer platforms, because we're in a privileged position to bring over content."

However, the partnerships that Union has signed so far face an uncertain future. Research In Motion is going through a very well publicised rough patch, including service failures, huge layoffs, and the poor performance of the Playbook, one of Union's destination platforms. The Xperia Play has also failed to shine at market, and while the Nokia N9 was well received by tech reviewers, Nokia announced in excess of 7000 redundancies this year and posted an operating loss of €500m for the six months ending July 2011.

"We call them new and emerging platforms for a reason," Tversky argues. "They're not all necessarily going to become the next iOS."

"We deal with it in a couple of ways. One, we diversify; you've seen three or four announced deals, and we've got another four or five in the pipeline. Maybe not all of the platforms are going to be huge, but if we've got nine of them and we get on a [successful] platform early it's a huge opportunity for our developers."

"The second thing is we work closely with the platform owners, and structure the deals in such a way that we're covering some of our risks."

Some other engines...you can build an absolutely amazing game with them if you have an amazing and a large art team. You don't necessarily need that with us

John Goodale, Unity Technologies

Tversky estimates that, right now, "about half" of the deals for Union are for mobile, and half are for connected and Smart TVs. When asked about which holds the most promise for Unity's development community, Tversky doesn't hesitate.

"On mobile it's got really good potential. On TV I think it's got huge potential. It's a more open market and we have a lot of interesting advantages. From the TV side I can see Union becoming absolutely huge... But that market doesn't exist today. It's still 2 to 4 years off."

A striking thing about the way Unity deals with the press is how readily its emissaries are willing to discuss the future, and there's a very good reason: the company is growing so quickly on so many fronts that virtually everything outside of its core product is in its nascent stages.

The company's expansion into Asia is another example. John Goodale, who took over operations in the region earlier this year, claims that the company's Asian business is growing at a rapid pace: a revenue increase of 258 per cent by the end of August 2011 over all of its Asian revenue in 2010. Currently, four of the top five cities in the world for sessions logged on Unity are in Asia, and Goodale believes this is just the beginning.

"Before I joined, the company was largely reactive in Asia: it got enquiries and dealt with them as they came in," he says. "Since I got on board we've become very pro-active in that space. That has made a big difference. In July, we opened Unity Korea, and we staffed it with three individuals. In September, we officially launched Unity Japan. We currently have two employees and are aggressively hiring additional support staff."

Though all of Asia's regions are different, in China, Japan and Korea direct relationships are an absolute necessity of doing business. Goodale describes the presence of official Unity representatives on the ground in the region as "huge" for its future growth. The company can now deal with the local community in a common language, and get a clearer idea of what it needs to gain a better foothold in the region.

"We're keen on identifying trends and then marketing and selling specifically to those trends. Those are different country by country," says Goodale.

In China, there is a "huge flight" from PC client-based MMORPGs to browser-based MMORPGs, which Unity's forthcoming Flash integration is well placed to serve. In Korea, the flight is from PC-based MMORPGs to mobile phones, the platform where Unity is arguably strongest. In Japan, Goodale believes the games industry is being driven by social games, and Unity is already working closely with both DeNA and Gree to reach out to the local independent development community.

But as much as each country needs special attention - and Unity's Asian roadshow has already added Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines to its promotional tour - Goodale believes that Unity has one quality that will ensure its success, and make it a more attractive proposition than any other engine company trying to break into the region.

"The number one reason why we're successful in Asia is also applicable elsewhere, and I would call that scalability," he says. "You can use and be successful with Unity if you're a single person working in your garage, or you can be successful with the technology if you're a huge developer, and we have that kind of customer in Asia."

"So the technology scales, but the business model also scales, whether you pay us nothing or whether you pay us a million dollars, and that works worldwide."

"Some other engines, without mentioning any names, you can build an absolutely amazing game with them if you have an amazing and a large art team. You don't necessarily need that with us. They're all trying, and they're all successful in their own rights there, but I would be surprised if they were having the same kind of growth we are."