I’ve been using Unity 4 for over a year now and I’m not sure if whether or not I should make the switch, will the graphics significantly improve, is coding easier? Can’t someone still use Unity 4 to still produce good games that will surpass any products from any Unity 5 software.
Buying new software won’t magically make your games better, no. The built in graphics have been upgraded pretty significantly, but you need appropriate art to benefit from it so you might not see much if any advantage from a port, especially if you’ve got lots of custom or 3rd party shaders and such.
But if you start a new project that benefits from the various new features then yes, you’ve got the potential to make it better than if you’d started the same new project with Unity 4.
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If you are a free user then the upgrade is a no brainer, since unity 5 unlocks all of the previously pro-only features.
If you’re a unity 4 pro user and you’re considering unity 5 free, you might as well switch to 5 free since 4 probably won’t get the updates and features that 5 will. Beware the splash!
If you’re a unity 4 pro user and you’re considering unity 5 pro, then you do get an upgrade discount, but you should look into the features and make sure they’re worth your money. Do you frequently make use of the asset store? Do you have need for cloud services? Do you work on a team? Those are reasons to use unity 5 pro.
Also please not you can’t mix pro and non-pro so if you are a team and you’re considering to upgrade or not, everyone on the team needs to be pro or free if it’s a collaborative project. If you’re an individual making games as a hobby or hoping to gross <100,000 then you should probably go with 5 free.
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Short answer is: of course you can (but outside of what have been said).
If you really don’t want to upgrade to Unity 5, you don’t have to.
@Bite7 , you should upgrade as fast as you can to Unity 5. You get all new PBR stuff and improvements. No counting Enlighten for precomputed real time GI, rocks to be honest.
Can I easily move my project to Unity 5?
- Get personal, it’s free
- Back up project
- Try it
Honestly, this topic shouldn’t exist 
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That depends on your project. You can at least easily copy your project and open it in Unity 5 to find it out on your own.
Thanks for the help I just downloaded it, looks great 
I’d say for certain, if you plan on making anything beyond mobile games…
Heres something from the project I’m currently working on made in unity 5…
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@CastleIsGreat oh good point! Weren’t there a few benchmarks that did worse on Unity 5 than Unity 4 for mobile? Might not have been mobile… Might have already been fixed… but there was a forum topic of it.
I believe that was android, and it had to do with UI elements. I think they’ve either fixed or are fixing it with 5.2 or 5.3… Having developed a game on both ios and android, I’d say its still worth the upgrade.
The API ruined all my scripts tho 
Did you run the automatic script updater?
Did you have a look at this page:
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UpgradeGuide5.html
Yes, it is worth it. Even games that use legacy shaders (like mine does) benefit greatly from the new lighting model.
As for scripts, etc. didn’t have any trouble converting these and only minor issues regarding changes in physics (which were resolved since).
Let me rephrase the question: Would the same person create better graphics on Unity 4 than Unity 5?
No. Absolutely not. At the very, very worst, it would look exactly the same.
Unless you’re a Unity 4 Pro user, there’s no reason not to upgrade to Unity 5 Free. And even then, there are a ton of reasons to upgrade to Unity 5, with money being the only real negative.
You can create better graphics in the sense that there are more possibilities, more things to play around with. And especially if the lighting conditions change within the game, e.g. to create different moods, it is infinitely simpler because the materials don’t need to be adjusted for each lighting situation, they will mostly just work. From that point of view, it can be a huge time saver or it can enable you to realize things that were not possible before.
So, if that person is creative, has a vision and likes to experiment, that person can create better graphics in Unity 5 with the built-in tools. For me graphics in a game doesn’t mean a screenshot, but the overall impression and impact for the player. In my opinion, it is possible to create better results within the same amount of time.
These two sentences seem to be somewhat at odds with one another.