This is just a thought, but I think it would be cool if UT bundled the licenses with asset store credit .
Something like get 25% back on your purchase in Asset store credit would work great .
For example if I buy Unity pro I would get 375$ back in asset store credit . This would help to jump start game development , and wouldn’t really cut into Unity’s profits since it would encourage more people to upgrade to pro( plus once your an asset store customer your far more likely to keep shopping ).
What would be the point? It would be cheaper to spend $375 than to spend $1500 and get $375 back. The people who can’t afford Unity would still not be able to afford it even if it gave some credit back.
It could push people over the edge into buying pro . It’s a really low cost way for UT to add value to pro .
It would benefit people who were already planning to buy Unity Pro. If you’re not, then it wouldn’t matter anyway.
However, if they were to do that, you would probably see an increase in the price of Unity, since they only get a small percentage of purchases from the asset store.
30% is far from small . This would probably encourage people to spend more money in the asset store actually . Like someone who would of never considered the asset store might become a regular customer
Do you realize you’re ripping off the people that developed those assets by doing this?
Unity doesn’t own most of the assets in the store so why should I give you money off purchasing mine just because you bought Unity Pro.
Its less than 70%. But yes, it would encourage people to use the asset store more, which is the part of this that I think makes it a good idea.
I think the idea would be that Unity would pay the asset developers the difference (which is why I said Unity would be losing money on the deal).
Unity would compensate the authors . Its a long term thing , many devs will buy pro and never touch the asset store . Once you introduce them to it their more likely to spend money .
Long term I don’t think Unity would lose all that much money , they take 30% out of the asset store profits, so it comes out to a 250$ cost to them . But when you’ve motivated devs to start using your asset store you’d recoup that fast .
Plus it make the 6k a dev would have to spend to go pro on all platforms a little less painful
Wait, are you saying you want UT’s share of $375 profit from the sale of Unity Pro license which cost $1500 to be diverted into Asset Store credit ?? That doesn’t make sense.
First, UT lose $375 profit which can be critical to their bottom line. Why should you penalize UT for the sake of Asset Store sellers? You are taking profit from UT to be given to Asset Store sellers.
Second, this raise the question - Why shouldn’t I just pay UT $1125 if that $375 is going to be Asset Store credit that I may never use ?!?!!?! You ever think about people who just don’t buy from Asset Store?
Unity only would lose 250$ since they take 30% off the top of asset store sales .
Your free to not use the asset store credit , but you’d still pay 1500$ , in this case Unity loses nothing .
I suspect those who do use the asset store credit would end up as long term customers most of the time . Meaning Unity would re-coup that 250$ pretty fast .
It’s just an idea , but with people constantly whining that UT cost too much it would make UT a better value .
Here’s the general break down of it.
You buy Unity Pro, and you are awarded X amount of Asset Store credit. This encourages users to actually use the Asset Store. It puts it on their radar and its proven that once someone spends money somewhere, they are much more likely to continue spending money there.
If you buy something, Unity pays out the credit to the Asset developer.
Yes, Unity will make back 30% of that initial loss, but its still a loss, so you would likely see an increase in the initial cost of Pro to compensate.
Also, for those who do buy Pro, and still don’t spend their Asset Store credit (which will also happen quite a bit), Unity simply keeps that money. Assuming this is at an increased price, they actually would make money on it. They could still spin the increased price by hyping the “Store Credit” bit, but that would only work on new users; not so much on us folks who are familiar with the old pricing.
Between the people who never use asset store credit and the 30% UT cut Unity doesn’t need to raise the price . Plus this makes Unity a more attractive choice as an engine .
No. It’s an extremely /high-cost/ way for them to add value to pro. You’re talking about cutting one of their main revenue streams by up to 16%. For them to make all that lost revenue back, they’d have to increase their sales of Pro by around 20%. If they don’t, well… every 15 copies they fall short of that target is a $50k developer they can’t pay that month.
Yes, some people might not use their “rebate,” but you basically have to write the money off. You can’t commit to using it to pay a salary.
Hiring developers to actually implement new stuff into Unity is actually cheaper, I think, and benefits more people.
Do you have any data whatsoever to suggest that this kind of deal would “push people over the edge” to the tune of a 20% increase in sales?
If they did this for a limited time it may be a worthwhile promotion. Long term I don’t know.
Human nature dictates most people wont spend EXACTLY 375$ in the asset store .
Why expect UT to implement something into unity when you can buy an asset to do that . I personally feel that UT should at least try it , for a month or so , to see it’s affect on sales , ect .
No. But many of them will come close (like, to within $10). It’s still money that UT have to reserve, which means they can’t take it into account when deciding whether they can afford a new long-term commitment like hiring someone.
Because in the majority of cases you can’t buy an asset to do that. UT shouldn’t be implementing things that can be easily implemented by third parties and sold on the store, but that still leaves plenty of things they can do to improve the product at the engine-core level (and personally, my experience on the asset store is that most of the code packages up there are pretty poor quality anyway).
So, no other data - you just think it might work, so UT should try it and see?
That’s actually OK - an experiment is the thing to do when one has no data (though in this case I think UT probably has a lot more data than anyone in this thread). But just doing it and seeing what happens isn’t a well-designed experiment, because you’re not isolating other possible explanations. For example, what’s the betting that Unity sees above-average sales in the run-up to Christmas, as some Unity Pro licenses get bought as gifts? If it’s done when Unity 4.1 comes out, how do you know whether to attribute a sales spike to the asset store credit vs. people buying licenses because 4.1 fixes things that were stopping them getting 4.0? And so on and so on.
If this is a massive risk for UT they could just lower the amount . Say to 100$ , then again its not like UT has never given out anything before , the Android/IOS give away comes to mind . What I THINK( I don’t have massive amounts of data behind me) would happen is more developers would use the asset store, become long term customers , and ultimately UT would make a net profit .
And its a great way to pitch Unity as a fast way to develop a game , what you want in Unity and what I want in Unity might not be exactly the same .
Rather then having to pay someone full time to add a feature you want , then can give you credit to buy it .
Like I consider Game Draw a fantastic product and I think UT should integrate it into Unity asap . And someone is working on an code editor that works within Unity . But Unity can’t hire EVERY talented asset store author .
It also addresses the fact that many are starting to think Unity cost too much , this way Unity can give some of that money back, but only by keeping that money invested in your Unity project . A dev house may experiment with 2 or 3 engines before deciding what to go with , and asset store credit would help them to decide to go ahead with unity .
Plus on the low-end it would be really great . If I have to spend 400$ for android basic , but I get 100$ in assets to help me get started,it makes the cost of unity seem that much more reasonable .