14 DAY TRIAL // At the Game Developers Conference, which is happening this week, the team working on the Unity suite of game engine tools is announcing the launch of the fifth full version, which is designed to allow players to create titles on a variety of platforms and enhances the core development features.
The company is saying that it will deliver a Professional version, which is set to integrate a new Cloud Build service and an analytics package, that will cost those interested 75 dollars (59 Euro) per month or 3,000 dollars (2,450 Euro) upfront.
No royalties will ever be charged and those who use it will get constant improvements and more extra services.
Unity 5 Personal is set to be offered for free to all those who have revenue or funding of under 100,000 dollars (81,000 Euro) per year and will offer the full engine.
The company says its new tech is at the moment more robust and advanced than that of Unity 4, and claims that there are long-term plans to continue to work with developers in order to add new concepts and ideas.
Recently, Epic Games also announced that it was making its own Unreal Engine 4 free for teams, although they would still have to pay royalties once they actually deliver a product built with it.
Unity is one reason for the indie game explosion
John Riccitiello, who has recently been named the chief executive officer of Unity, says that he does not believe Unreal Engine offers direct competition for his own company and that users are free to choose which version of the development tools they prefer.
The company claims Unity 5 has introduced an entirely new take on how graphics are handled, with more options for shading, global illumination and reflections.
A new audio engine means that third-party solutions are no longer needed.
Riccitiello adds Unity 5 is the biggest step forward for the company and that a focus on the engineering side will allow developers to create great gaming experiences using the new tech.
It will be interesting to see whether in the future more teams will be interested in the flexibility that Unity is offering or will prefer to work with Unreal Engine 4 for its extra focus on graphics.
