Unity user base jumps 158% following dev conference

Users of Unity Technologies' Unity development platform have increased by 158 per cent following the company's annual development conference held at the end of October.

Following Unite 2009, the company's third annual developer conference, the number of registered users of the platform soared to 33,500.

During the conference's opening keynote, Unity Technologies' CEO David Helgason also announced the platform formerly known as Unity Indie and priced at USD 199 would be made available to developers at no cost.

He confirmed too the availability of version 2.6 of the Unity platform and upcoming support for 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."

The conference, held between October 27-30 in San Francisco, attracted a record number of attendees, up 125 per cent on last year.