You misunderstand. They have different verticals but Jim’s mission is the same. Sell them tools at enterprise subscription prices. Per seat, per project, per shot if they can. Forget the indie game devs and their small studios. That bridge is burned beyond recognition or reconciliation.
And small indies may transform into large enterprises surprisingly fast. Mihoyo was a small indie only 10 years ago.
Its much much easier to repair bridges with indies, who don't really want to move off unity as much as you think, and can be placated by backpedaling and the CEO replacement.
Considering Unity's previous pricing model (per seat) it really didn't matter that much whether their client made 5, 10 or 50 mil unless they massively increased their hiring because of that, unless they can charge per install/% of revenue.
> Traditional industries rarely have such lopsided staff/revenue ratios.
A negligibly small proportion of indie developers are even close to that.
It's just so much easier to get your product ingrained into a company that is growing, as long as you are getting your revenue tied to theirs. Their growth becomes your growth. But it has to be done in a way that makes them not run away. Offer different funding models depending on the project on the other end, and let the customer pick their pricing plan. When the plan for the small company starts looking too expensive for the big one, you get to renegotiate when your tools are already everywhere, and moving away is a hassle.
It works for AWS, Stripe and the like. It should work here.
It will be interesting to see how his Whitehurst's pedigree translates to this smaller-scale, higher-touch sales motion.
Forgoing the core Unity audience of game developers and gunning for studios / VFX when Unity is clearly not the graphically superior engine sounds risky at best, reckless at worst.