They don't need to convince their already huge and already convinced core users, so there's not much point in building big tech demos that apply in that space. The aspirational AAA stuff that Unity puts out does 3 things I think:
- convince current indies with big dreams that their investment in unity has long legs if they grow larger and more ambitious.
- open up to non-gaming gfx tech sectors: broadcast, movies, simulation, etc.
- push their engine to its limits so they know where it hurts the most in places that actual users are not pushing. (it has many known rough edges and areas, but Unity users already report these)
Also, Unreal has enough money to burn (from Fortnite) to venture off into new spaces. Unity is taking far more of a risk here, since these indie gamedevs are still the main revenue flow (especially considering that Unity sells their engine in a monthly seat-based system rather than a revenue sharing model like Unreal). If these core users move away and investors become skeptical that Unity's going to make money (they're still burning tons of investor money every year without significant revenue), what we're going to see is a total disaster.
I'm a full time Unity dev, but have many years of Unreal experience, and we occasionally look at what Unreal is doing now. To be honest, I just don't want to code in Blueprints or go back to C++.
If I were building a multiplayer game, or a big open world game, then I might be convinced to give up C#, and go back to Unreal.
With regard to management of the engine, I think there have been some less than optimal decisions, (URP vs HDRP, Multplayer, DOTS) but its really a huge project I hate to criticize because I'm not sure I would have done anything differently.
The revenue from mobile apps is quickly drying up now that we are getting stronger anti-gambling laws. Because let's be honest, mobile games make money by hooking rich gambling addicts. That's why the industry calls them "Chinese Whales" and the "99.9%-ers" who are allowed to play for free so that the actual customers have enemies to crush with their pay-to-win items.
That said, I have a very low expectation of Unity-the-company to pull this off successfully.
Care to elaborate? As in, what sort of legislation is coming up widespread across countries that would harm the revenues of, say, Candy Crush?
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-49674333
"Loot boxes 'link to problem gambling'"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-46295317
"Number of child gamblers quadruples in just two years"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46286945
"Could Candy Crush Saga be a gateway to gambling?"
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/could-candy-crush-saga-be-...
"How ‘Near-misses’ in Candy Crush Increase Frustration, and the Urge to Continue Gameplay"
[..] "some players can, and do spend more than they can afford on these games (Lloyd 2016)."
[..] "Tellingly, Candy Crush players often specifically liken Candy Crush to slot machine play to convey its appeal"
GDK_SCALE=2 GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.5 ~/Unity/Hub/Editor/2020.3.25f1/Editor/Unity
oof
It's all terrible right now but they will get there.
This is a big one, and I guess will be true in the near future if not already. If their tech is easy / common enough, some sites will benefit greatly from this, such as virtual museum / zoo, better google street view interface, virtual space exploration and physics demonstration for educational purpose, etc.
But make no mistake: Unity is the reason Unreal suddenly got cheaper and open source a few years back. Both companies read The Innovator's Dilemma and both know WTF they are doing.
BTW Will Epic's ludocrisly, mission-distortingly successful Fortnite, like Wrigleys, cause them to become The Fortnite Company? (similarly will Rockstar become the GTAV Company?)
The difference is Unreal is eating their own dog food.
With Unity, the price per seat means only people who leave will send a signal, which will be too late. They are not incentivized to make day-to-day work efficient, which is why there are a million small bugs.
[1] - https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq - "This license is free to use and incurs 5% royalties when you monetize your game or other interactive off-the-shelf product and your lifetime gross revenues from that product exceed $1,000,000 USD."
I’m not sure how the overall quality compares, but I’d expect Unity’s users to be way more critical even if it had more bugs just because of all the indie/small developers who’d fall below the 1mil threshold for Unreal but have to pay for Unity.
Many years ago I was playing Runescape and a friend quipped that MMOs are basically Myspace with a game attached to it. And I think he was right. MMOs live and die by the network effect. Runescape had 150 million user accounts something like a decade ago, if not even before that. I'm sure World of Warcraft, Lineage 2, and League of Legends had at least comparable numbers.
I think if this were the next step of social networking, then it would have already happened. Perhaps it already did? We just call them gaming communities. If that's the case, then video games have created competing social networks that exist at the same time and aren't just being eaten by the biggest one.
You'll find it on Steam and Epic and other gaming platforms.
Easy choice as to which is more authentic.
I guess it depends where do you live, though. Where I’m from Messenger is still the most popular messaging platform so most people (unless they have very strong feelings about FB) have an account.
There are very few close relationships that I have on Facebook. I have it because I needed an account for a while, and haven't deleted it so that it can function as a placeholder should anyone try to impersonate me.
Meanwhile, almost all of my friends have a presence on Steam - including some who I rarely if ever do or have seen in person.
parity: Equality, as in amount, status, or value.
parrot: One who imitates the words or actions of another, especially without understanding them.
I'm just starting to play with Unity, but I am playing with it at all because I can essentially learn along the way with them since they are still releasing things that I just don't quite need yet. This may not make sense to some people, but no offense to them... their opinions don't matter. We are the ones using this, not them.
I actually disagree with this on a much broader level: I think that every company should continue to convince their core users.
1. Their core users are always considering alternatives
2. The people using their competitor’s products will see how well you treat your core users and may look at their current company and see the lack of it. It’s like when a company chases new customers by giving discount after discount but never once offering a discount to great long-term customers. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the people who’ve carried your company.
I think if I were to start a high fidelity project with a big team, I'd start seriously considering the art pipeline benefits you're getting from Unreal. It looks like they're trying pretty hard to take some of the tedious work out of lighting and setting up LODs, which could be a big time savings.
> The short movie demos aren't impressive. It's embarassing when half your keynote is a group of artists explaining how they spent 6 months re-writing half the engine to render something that they could made in Maya in a week.
Really wish Unity stopped being recommended as a great first choice for hobbyists with a bit of programming experience in general. In my experience I've found it a lot harder to get going with it, and requires dealing with a lot of systems which are in various stages of deprecation or early access compared to UE.
> Show me a 100 player PUBG type game running at solid 60fps on a current gen console or mobile. We already know you can render a GTA3 cutscene.
So, as I understand, he complains that the demo team spends more time trying to make demos that looks like movies instead of making demos that are more focus on the game parts.
Unity is definitely a very stable engine with a lot of features and very nice and simple to work with. I know several developers who see Unity as a better alternative than Unreal for any scale because the development process is so smooth. As a graphics programmer I feel liberated by how easy it is to set things up.
I've also looked into performance quite a lot and it's not bad. There are issues, especially on certain platforms, and a lot of gotchas. But their analysis tools are really mature and help solve a lot of issues without having to load up external tools. It's definitely possible to make beautiful and performant Unity games.
This is the view they want to promote. What they don't want you to know is that the engine keeps churning out half baked features which never get fully fleshed out or documented properly. A lot of indie developers also complain about support but at least with their enterprise support you often get swift and helpful answers.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/the-mandalorian-was-s...
People who are just getting started will see this and see that Unity must surely be capable of everything they need, and it may even be trivial there, if it can also handle this.
It's also a piece of aspirational marketing. It doesn't make sense to show the reality of the mobile game space as that won't get anyone excited. It's what you could do, not what you will do.
An anecdote from my studio: My studio is work for hire with mostly Unity devs. The "big ticket" contracts are in Unreal, so the studio is starting to push for devs to learn Unreal, so we can start landing those contracts. In this case, the publisher perception of Unity/Unreal is creating a business need in our company to move away from Unity and into Unreal.
It's sadly even worse. To replicate most of this, you need access to the C++ part of the engine source code. If you're small (e.g. less than $10 mio annual revenue), they won't even discuss pricing with you.
I fully agree. One of the top voted comments on the YouTube demo video even captures this pretty good in a humorous way:
> Can't wait to use this to make another low poly game
In that context it would make sense to make demos for the capabilities that people don't know that you have.
It has been a while since Unity is not just a mobile engine.
games produced and distributed by a mid-sized or major publisher, which typically have higher development and marketing budgets than other tiers of games.
However, you do see plenty of exceptions like the original Dark Souls which took serious risks. Which was then followed by two lower risk sequels.
Can't afford to just keep narrowing down on existing customer base. They need to keep expanding and competing, for e.g. with Unreal https://youtu.be/bErPsq5kPzE
source: work in marketing
It seems to me that they are trying to prove that they are a serious 'AAA' engine, but these demos aren't that convincing to me - AAA is a lot more than putting fancy shaders on high-poly models, it's about handling huge amounts of objects in a dynamics situation, displaying large worlds via streaming, having a workflow that accommodates every creative professional, and offering great performance and visuals even on very complex scenes.
I've hear that even these highly impressive demos are fake - they built a ton of custom code for each one they rebuild core Unity features, meaning if you wanted to replicate this for yourself, you'd be in for a ton of development.
Comparatively UE5's Nanite demo showed off a tech that's ready to go for production.