Unity Tools Coming for PlayStation Developers

Unity Technologies announces a brand new partnership with SCEA, bringing Unity tools to many PS4, PS3, Vita and PlayStation Mobile developers.

[Snookies12]

That's awesome news.

[GribbleGrunger]

Absolutely. Give it a year or so and we should see all sorts of benefits from this through all of Sony's platforms.

[SilentNegotiator]

Totally. I'm learning game development with Unity.

[Pandamobile]

As a Unity developer, this is fantastic.

[RememberThe357]

As a Unity developer, do you mind explaining what the benefit of Unity is as opposed to some other tool set?

[Pandamobile]

Unity's main advantage over other engines is that is easier than most (arguably one of the more designer-friendly engines out there), and it's cheap as dirt compared to other engines.

I can pick up Unity and start making games for free. I can port them to Android and iOS for fixed one time fee of around $400.

It also runs on just about every relevant platform, so it's incredibly portable.

[madireed]

PS Vita just got a whole lot better

[Anon1974]

I'd been bugging Unity about Vita support ever since I received my Vita although they had been sticking to "No support planned at this time" last I mentioned it to their reps a couple of months ago.

This is good news. We already have a great little puzzle game in Unity that could do with a Vita overhaul. I've already had people asking if we were considering a Vita version and our answer up until this point was "no" just based on the time it would take to redo this game outside of Unity just for the Vita.

I just wonder what this support is going to cost?

[miyamoto]

I wish you all the best!

another great games centered deal Sony acquired

especially for the PS Vita

[clintagious650]

Keeping devs happy will do wonders for u.

[majiebeast]

Playstation mobile support is a very good unexpected suprise and with it we should see a rise in ps mobile games. Sony is making the right decisions especially for indie developers. GDC should be pretty intresting for playstation this year.

[sinncross]

We will only see a rise in PS Mobile games when Sony decides to add trophy support (which could be a result of this support of Unity) and when they open PS Mobile to all PSN regions.

the last part is the key thing Sony needs to work on.

[Twinzclipz]

awesome

[sherimae2413]

a vita game using unity engine, i cant wait to see! ^_^

[asmith2306]

Escape Plan was built using Unity.

[illtornworld]

I can finally start my classic jrpg in real time! Thank you sony and unity! my prayers has been answered

[neoMAXMLC]

Hmm... I should bug the ReRave developers for a Vita port. :P

[anderssc]

As a dabbler in the unity engine this is great news :)

[Sharingan_no_Kakashi]

YES!!!!! Now I can start my company :)

[Meep]

Sounds like great new but I still don't get it. Does that mean its easier to develop it on playstaion products now?

[Pandamobile]

Yes. Unity handles pretty much all of the behind the scenes details for porting a game to multiple platforms.

All it takes are some minor tweaks (mostly with UI and controls) in order to get a game running on everything form an iPhone to a PC, to a PS4.

[Meep]

Ok thanks for clearing that up. I'm guessing before this you had to do it manually.

[Pandamobile]

Yes, at some point, every multiplatform engine needs to be coded to handle performing the same operation on different hardware.

With Unity, it handles pretty much everything for you, so you, as the developer can spend more time focusing on actually making a game instead of worrying about potential issues different hardware configurations might cause.

[Bladesfist]

@PandaMobile A lot of this is because of Mono allowing us to reach a whole load of platforms with the same code. I worked on a key bind system for Unity which you can find on my bitbucket page if you want to make that part of porting simpler.

[Trago1337]

This could mean that indie devs could just easily port a game from PC to PS4, 720, and Wii U with out much hassle, since Unity capitalizes on easy multiplatform development.

SUPER great news for indie devs looking to make games on consoles.

[Hazmat13]

awesome i was thinking about this when i went to there website. fun cheap games to play!

[Ragthorn]

This will be off topic, but which is better? Unity or UDK? Thank you for submissions, I want to learn how to use one of them.

[Pandamobile]

"Better" is subjective.

[Ragthorn]

lol

[Bladesfist]

If you are a programmer then Unity is great. It allows you to work with C# and see your changes in real time. Code once and deploy on multiple platforms with Mono. Although Unity can handle DX11 now it has a lot less prebuilt shaders and effects compared to UDK. The licensing for Unity is also better as you only have to buy a license when you earn more than $100,000 a year. You do not have to pay a percent of your earnings like with UDK.

I guess I should add that you can also work with pretty much any .NET language, C++, Boo and Unityscript.

[Ragthorn]

Thank you for your reply, this has helped me in my choice between them. You know a lot about this, very happy for your reply. Thank you for replying.

[Tales RPG addict]

now for a "Valkyrie Profile" Sequel on PS3/PS VITA

[maniacmayhem]

This is excellent news for the mobile community and great way to start...unifying experience.

I myself am trying to get schooled in Unity.