Unity Technologies, provider of the Unity development platform for highly interactive 3D on the web, iPhone, iPad, PC, Mac, Android, Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, today celebrated Unity’s fifth anniversary. Unity, launched onstage at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in 2005, is commemorating five years of steadfast leadership and relentless innovation in enabling and empowering rich 3D games for web, mobile, console and anywhere else where games and immersive experiences are called for."We put very polished and productive tools ahead of bleeding edge engine technology, created a very simple, clean and approachable licensing model for the masses and made an early bet on web and mobile before it was clear they would be gaming devices," said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. "In just five years since its introduction, Unity has gone from bedroom geekery to truly mainstream. We thrive on innovating and heavily reinvest in development to keep moving and growing at a radical pace so we can continue to raise the bar for innovation and continue to amaze our customers."
In early 2003 and long before the introduction of Facebook and the iPhone, co-founders David Helgason (CEO), Nicholas Francis (Chief Creative Officer) and Joachim Ante (Chief Technology Officer) had the vision of democratizing game development and enabling everyone to create rich interactive 3D which would disrupt the game engine market. They took the very complex and expensive technology required for modern, cross-platform video game development and built a powerful, intuitive suite of tools with smooth and efficient workflows around it. The result: Unity - a breakthrough development platform for creating high quality 3D interactive content including video games, training simulations and medical and architectural visualizations. Apple invited Unity Technologies to launch Unity onstage at WWDC in June 2005.
Today Unity is the #1 game engine on the market and in education, by far the leading game technology on the iPhone and iPad and the fastest growing game development platform in terms of developer mindshare. Unity powers web games for global brand names like Axe, Cadbury Crunchie, Cartoon Network, Cheerios, Coca-Cola, DC Comics/Warner Bros., Disney, Gorillaz, Iron Man, LEGO®, Looney Tunes/Warner Bros., Marvel Super Hero Squad, Pepsi and Tiger Woods. Unity also powers mobile hit games like Ravensword: The Fallen King, Samurai: Way of the Warrior, Skee-Ball, Star Wars Trench Run and Zombieville USA and training apps like Launcher Dogs for the US Military.
At the same time, tens of thousands of developers are leveraging Unity's innovations to create innovations of their own — new unique control interfaces, real-time sports broadcasting, new ways of interacting with social networks, new ways to advertise products, augmented reality games, integrated devices and many more. Two recent examples include a game made for General Mills that uses a cereal box as a game controller via a webcam; another turns the iPhone into a game controller for a web game connected over Wi-Fi. To see where developers are taking Unity, go to: http://unity3d.com/gallery/game-list/.
"The team at Unity has been great to work with - they have a very similar philosophy to Google around empowering developers," said Mark DeLoura, Developer Advocate, Games, Google. "Unity recognizes that the wider the reach of their platform, the more valuable the technology is to game developers. It's valuable for independent developers who are trying to reach the largest audience possible with a tight budget, and it's valuable for large studios who are trying to keep down development costs so they can outshine their competition and produce the best big-budget blockbuster that they can."
"I continue to believe that 3D content will be the next big event on the web. Unity is perfectly placed to make that a fast and easy experience for developers that will ultimately delight customers with a much higher fidelity experience,” said David Gardner, London Venture Partners GP and one of Electronic Arts' first employees. “The team at Unity has delivered a great platform which has now reached critical mass with the development community. It is battle tested with major brands successfully launching content via the internet. With new devices such as the iPad making it so easy to have a great visual experience, the demand for 3D content will skyrocket.”
Key Facts
• Unity Technologies is one of the fastest growing software companies
• Unity and its users continue to be recognized for excellence with major awards and accolades
• Unity Technologies is privately held with 50 percent of revenues outside of the US; 1/3 of revenue is non-gaming related
• Unity Technologies investors include Sequoia Capital (the well-known VC behind technology brands such as Apple, Electronic Arts, Google and NVIDIA), David Gardner (one of Electronic Arts' first employees) and Diane Greene (VMware Co-Founder and Former CEO)
• Unity Technologies' business model of Unity being free to a large proportion of developers and affordable for the rest has revolutionized the games business
• Unity is the de facto standard for delivering high quality 3D content on the web with the free Unity Web Player that offers an effortless install process to run Unity content inside all major browsers and operating systems
• Unity Technologies' biggest growth areas are mobile and global social networks
• Unity iPhone is currently the most widely-used middleware in games for the App Store and has established clear market leadership in this vibrant segment
• 10-20 percent of top selling games are iPhone games, and nearly 1000 Unity games are in the App Store today with many having made “best of” and “top selling” lists
• Unity is being used to create games for Facebook and MySpace - no other engine offers such versatility
• Unity Technologies offers the broadest platform support of any game engine on the market
Key Milestones
2010:
• Unity surpassed 170,000 developers milestone
• Free Unity Web Player surpassed 30 million total installations
• Free Unity Web Player achieved more than 2 million installs per month - with monthly installations still growing
• Unity Technologies made a huge splash at Google I/O with Unity pluginless in Chrome [http://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/05/19/google-android-and-the-future-of-games-on-the-web/]
• Unity Technologies was named a San Francisco Business Times' Tech and Innovation Entrepreneur Award Finalist
• Electronic Arts launched Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online [http://tigerwoodsonline.ea.com/]
• Unity 3.0 preview showcased at Game Developers Conference (GDC) [http://unity3d.com/company/news/unity-unveils-3rd-generation-platform-press.html]
• Unity Technologies was named an "interesting company to watch" by InformationWeek
2009:
• Unity Technologies tripled in size
• Free version of Unity launched at Unite, Unity Technologies' Annual Developer Conference [http://unity3d.com/company/news/unity2.6-press.html]
• Sequoia Capital led a $5.5 million series A investment round with David Gardner and Diane Greene [http://unity3d.com/company/news/sequoia-capital-press.html]
• Unity Technologies was named one of the top five game companies of the year by Gamasutra
• Unity Technologies was credited with starting a "tech revolution" by Develop Magazine
2008:
• Unity Technologies tripled in size
• Unity iPhone launched
• Unity Technologies became an authorized middleware provider for the Wii
• Unity Technologies was named a Front Line Award Finalist by Game Developer
• Cartoon Network introduced FusionFall [http://fusionfall.cartoonnetwork.com/] which has been played by more than 8 million people
2007:
• Unity 2.0 launched
• Unity Technologies held first Annual Unite Developer Conference
2006:
• Unity was named an Apple Design Award Runner-up for "Best Use of Mac OS X Graphics" at Apple's WWDC - this is the first time that a game development tool reached the level of quality and ease of use required to win this prestigious award
2005:
• Unity 1.0 launched onstage at Apple's WWDC
To get the free feature-packed Unity to create games and interactive visualizations for the web, PC and Mac or to get a free 30 day evaluation of Unity Pro or Unity iPhone, go to: http://unity3d.com/unity/download/.