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.
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)