Unity 2023.3 coming April 2024 with updates for graphics and performance

? I don’t think they mention this anywhere, may I ask you where you got the info that .NET Core change will be part of the 2023 release?

The tech stream is really not that bad. Updating your project is work but there’s too much stigma surrounding it. Yes, it’s work but it can absolutely be worth it. Tech stream versions can be perfectly stable, you can ship games with them, or you can update them to an LTS version if you think that would improve your project.

For me, the 2023 tech stack has countless meaningful improvements that make my project better, and starting on the tech stack makes updating to the eventual LTS much easier (if that’s something I even need to do, because 2023.1 is perfectly fine).

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My guess is 2024 based on the progress/posts in the .NET scripting forum. This added tech release also delays the .1 release of 2024 and gives them more time for that testing.

If they work for you and your dev practices, go for it. I think they can be helpful to target a feature 1+ year from release and the pain of upgrading is low (small project/team). However, trying to release a game with a 10+ users relying on it to be stable for a production release is a mistake. Unity also seems to agree that they shouldn’t be used for production work.

Maybe if you target one or two platforms that are very well covered by your testing such as Desktop Steam. For multiplatform releases it’s a death sentence. Unity never address showstopping bugs in a timely manner so it’s up to us to avoid them, therefore LTS is the safest bet.

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Lol, then just call it 2024 LTS, i do not see the point, but…

…I see the problem and btw thank you for the info but, calling a tech version “production ready” is something we all know is bs (sorry) and the indie/less experienced devs like me (+80% of your users) are not going to use something that is not LTS for their games, it just does not have any sense at all… IDK, maybe call it “Unity 12” or “Unity 13” and use the LTS, tech, alpha or whatever internally but being in 2025 and opening unity 2023 to create a game with cool features and great graphics is not just weird but it doesn’t say anything good (apart from what is already said)

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2024 version should be skipped then. If Unity doesn’t do it now, Unity will need to do it later.

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23.4 LTS will be based on the feature set that is locked in towards the end of the 23.3 alpha. From this point of feature-freeze onward, through the rest of the life-cycle of 2023 LTS, the general rule is that no breaking changes or major new features are allowed to be added anymore. Then, before 23.3.0f1 Tech will be released, it has to go through several months of stabilization during the beta phase and pass quality criteria, such as the absence of known issues that would qualify as shipstoppers.The main difference between 23.3 Tech and 23.4 LTS is that an additional period will have passed during which remaining unknown issues can be uncovered and more bugfixes can land. 2023.3 Tech is going to be production ready in the sense that it will be feature complete, have gone through stabilization during the beta, and be fully supported until the end of the 2023 LTS life-cycle.

If there are features and changes in 23.3 that provide added value to you, we would recommend you give it a try once it has passed from beta to final release, and see if it works for you. If there are no features or changes that you want access to, waiting until the LTS has been released is the recommended approach.

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Thanks for the blog post, but oh boy is this confusing again :frowning:

Just for the record, do I get this right?
So some years ago you changed the cycle from being .4 the LTS version to .3 being the LTS version
Now we are going back to that again? Is that right?

If so: what was the reasoning for the change in the first place again and what has changed for it to make sense to go back to this numbering?

I think it was changed to 3 to have more time to polish each release before making something non beta, which still was not enough time this release

Just to get MY naming right:

initial versioning: .1 until .3 was Tech Stream, .4 was LTS

current versioning: .1 until .2 is Tech Stream, .3 is LTS

new versioning: .1 until .3 will be Tech Stream, .4 will be LTS

@DevDunk Yeah, I remember that, that’s why I would like to know from someone from Unity what has changed so they decided to go back to that cycle or do I misunderstand this new versioning and it is indeed different from the initial one?

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Obviously they can and do change their minds on a whim, but so far, there is no “new versioning”, so far, there is an exception, only for the 2023 cycle.

Wait what? It’s supposed to be an exception? :confused:
Alright @LeonhardP or @UnityMrAndyPuppy can you please confirm or deny this? Is this the start of a new (or rolled back) versioning or is this indeed an exception, if so: why?
Either I got something completely wrong or why dont you just say: “Hey, 2023 LTS is coming a little bit later than usual, sorry, our bad.” and be done with it instead of adjusting the versioning

Edit: Sorry, I am utterly confused by this move and just want to understand :')

I also understood it only to be for the 2023 release cycle.

Yeah, that’s why I was asking, bc I wasn’t sure if I got it right, is it a new versioning or just a temporary one or something else. But I feel you folks are probably right, it is an exception. Honestly it feels like a bad decision to make it one :confused:

I’m wondering if I have this right. Here’s my attempt to translate this. Correct me where I’ve got it wrong.

Unity: “The 2023 LTS will be available in 2025, because we decided to do just one tech release for 2024, and we’re (inexplicably) holding off the 2023 LTS till we add it on to that. So there will be no 2024 tech release at all, just a 2023 release delayed by one year so we can fit the stuff from 2024 into it. And this is a feature, not a bug, because we’re trying to get things to you faster.”

Is this what they’re telling us? I haven’t been following this right along, I just saw this, and I’m trying to make sense of it. My apologies if I’m grossly misunderstanding.

If I have it right, then my question is this:

Why don’t they just do a normal 2023 LTS release, and have a single tech release for 2024, and give us the 2024 LTS early? Then we have 2023 LTS without a huge delay, and the 2024 LTS comes early.

Yeah, this is my interpretation too. And probably it went something like this:

  • okay, so end of 2023 cycle soon, plus we have a unite, what major stuff we can dangle in the front of them?
  • nothing really, just some sweet incremental progress
  • that’s unacceptable, we need to rebrand 2024.1

Or something like that. Obviously I may be wrong.

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Well … I know this kind of comment doesn’t go over well, but … what the hell? It makes no sense. Unless there’s something else going on here, it’s just dumb.

Is the business model changing at Unity, and is this their way of de-emphasizing and winding down the game engine without actually disclosing that this is what they’re doing?

no i don’t think so
i rather think they’re coming to their senses in that doing releases based on yearly schedule is cca nonsense: (any) sw is ready to be released when it’s ready, not when calendar year changes

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I have no idea. What I see is that they’ve cut the tech stream down to one, and put the LTS on alternate years. It seems like the effort is cut in half.

As though Unity is doing something else that’s a higher priority, and the game part of the business is on the back burner now.

That’s true to individual features but not any SW. Actually it’s bad for any individual SW under perpetual iterative development. Scheduled release is great because the users could know when they can expect certain bug fixes. You don’t need to put any new features in there (in theory) to release 2023.3LTS. You just need the cumulative bug fixes during the 2023 development cycle. But marketing won’t be satisfied with it, and also the uneducated masses don’t get their hype-fix either. Quite frankly, the constant need for “the new shiny feature” and if they don’t give any, the “we are switching to unreal, unity is garbage”-crowd is toxic and gives you this situation. Obviously I hold my right to be wrong and this is only my own (bitter) opinion.