Hi, it’s one year I mess around with Unity free and am very happy with my progress. I’ve several small projects on my 2.6.1, say concept-games, and am wondering if I need Unity Pro. If the case I get it today! Last night had a declined transaction and thought of it as a last wake up call… so now or never in pre-order! But before ask the experts so help me please.
Let’s say I’ve not and I don’t want any iPhone / Android add-on at the moment, so it would be a stand-alone for web and related platforms (social sites? others?). That is one indie on the way up to semi-professional skills and maybe a shot at Steam platform for PC. Worthy it?
Let’s also say I’ve quit literature, theatre and some other hobbies to get into gaming, because I feel this is the most quality/revenue way to be in arts (narrative, scenographic, marketable) these days. Also Unity guys rock and I’m in love with this organization.
What I need from you is the last push, so please you Pro community have a word, make a gentle effort to let me jump on the wagon before the deadline! Enlist again the benefits of Unity Pro vs Unity free (especially you beta testers) and let the dream roll on!
Thanks a lot and have a nice day.
edit: one other big big call to buy today is jump in the 3.x whirlwind starting just now, with all the good news and collaboration they are delivering. Is Unity going to be the next big thing? I also fear Unity 3 Pro will cost much more any time forward, seeing the sheer amass of quality work they have put in.
Why? Unless you are making something that needs Unity Pro features, you are likely to be fine with Unity. In that time, save up some money and work on your stuff. When you have something that should really be rebuilt with Pro, take a serious look at it making the purchase.
Those we the reasons why I’ve chose to purchase Pro:
The Beast lightmapper is nice and easy to use, and gives a definite edge, both in performances and in looks compared to the free version.
Render to texture is a feature that might be useful in many situations.
The Profiler is crucial to any serious game developement.
The ability to write C/C++ plugins is very important for us: you never know what other 3rd party library you need to use and, not being tied to what is explicitely made for Unity or .NET is good. In our case, a C++ .DLL would be needed to link against the Esellerate SDK, which is what we use to sell products.
We use SVN, and Unity free doesn’t really support it. Unless you work alone, not having SVN it’s kind of a showstopper and, I think it’s much better value getting Unity Pro, rather than purchasing the Asset Server with the Free version, not when you already have your own SVN server which works nicely and all your team has been trained to use for many other projects beside those made with Unity.
Those were my own reasons, others might have different views…
I would also buy for learning, this is very big and very near to a real big studio environment, something we were dreaming of just a couple of years ago.
Fundamentally the bet here is: prices are going up or down? It is $1200 now, then $1500 say next weeek. Why not $3000 or at the end of the fair?
Collaboration may be an issue in my near future and you are just saying unity Pro handles the hassle better than Asset Server. Great news.
I also understand I need to develop my optimization skills and be open to the opportunity of third parties libraries. I’m average at C++ and now improving science modelling/performance by using Visual Studio 2010 free version… so it’s not a shot in the dark. Thanks again!
Its $1200 because its a preorder special action, for no other reason.
Afterwards it will go back up to its normal price per user again.
there is no “price movement” in the licensing, the price was stable for years basically
And I don’t see why would need to convince you. Either you buy it cause you want / need it or don’t and will potentially pay $300 more than yet if you later decade that you want / need it
just keep in mind that if you want android pro or iphone pro, you must have unity pro too and on those two platforms its likely that you want it cause you don’t get any occlusion culling otherwise nor build stripping
What I think you should do is get unity free and try using it commercially… if it’s profitable for you then you should definitively use that profit to help you buy a license, works out pretty good.
If find it’s not profitable for you, then over 1k might be a little expensive, imo.
I understand the pragmatic party: 880 euros + 25% VAT are not a joke if you have no business and a good rule of thumb says “make money before spending money”.
That’s why I’m here, still listening.
Thanks for your insight.
Anything’s possible, but UT have never raised prices on anything so far (aside from sales or promotions ending, which doesn’t count, and $1200 → $1500 in this case is simply a promotion ending, not a price increase).
Just thinking out loud, but, maybe instead of giving unity free away, what people at unity should do is either sell it for a smaller price, or maybe just charge a smaller fee to let unity free be used commercially. The license for pro is a little expensive for some people, but I’m sure there’s plenty of people willing to pay something in between $1500 and free for unity free (although if that happens they shouldn’t call it unity free :-0)
that is how it was before, unity free was previously called unity indie and cost $199
but the amount of efforts with support for payed customers and wrong expectations on what they are entitled to (got 90% of pro at the time and still wanted more at a fraction of the price, now its 0% cost of pro, they want more but just wont get it as $0 users ;)) among other reasonings lead to Unity Indie ($199) → Unity (free)
To dreamora and eric about the never raised price of Unity Pro: are we talking the same Unity Pro you had had as 2.6, 2.5, 2.0 or before? In my not-too-expert opinion, this 3.0 is so a great leap forward that $1500 is ridicously cheap.
What I smell here is a sensible repricing after the usual end of year rebate, maybe with Unity 3.1 release. This would also put together: the Unity free-for-the-masses as a fish catcher; the long pre-order period of Unity 3 to enroll the believers and for beta-testing; and the number of high level collaborations they are signing with big parties.
I really can’t think the price would not end up, sensibly up, quite soon. That’s why my gut instinct says buy now or miss the boat.
Being a leap forward doesn’t change much in terms of business model. If a product doesn’t evolve then there are no R/D costs and prices should go down dramatically.
When you’re selling a product there are basically 2 ways to go about it:
a. Low Profit per Unit and Large Volume
b. medium (to high) profit per unit and Smaller Volume
Unity apparently decided on point a when they released Unity free (which is supposed to be the hook for pro). If the pricing scheme changes dramatically (not minor ±5% adjustments) it probably means it didn’t quite pan out and point b is being reconsidered.
P.S: sorry for not knowing the exact English terms.
Unity Pro has always been $1500. Evidently it was $1000 at the very beginning for a little while, but as a special intro price, not the regular price.
I agree that it’s a good deal, but I don’t get any impressions of imminent price increases. The pricing has been heading the opposite way actually…Indie went $250 → $200 → $0. The $50 upgrade differential between Indie and Pro was eliminated. I don’t think they had a pre-order discount during the 1.x → 2.0 transition.
Originally they just had Unity. Now they have Unity iPhone, Unity Wii, Unity Android, Unity PS3, Unity Xbox 360. The add-ons have generally higher prices, which is where I expect a good chunk of the income comes from now (mostly Unity iPhone at this point).
pro + iphone + android + big buck studios that license the source per project especially as they definitely don’t work with the precompiled one (fusion fall and likely all ea projects on desktop too, potentially even on other platforms)
one point is: which market? Unity got the final word in the indie market allowing its entry tool for free
one other point is: how they are positioning themselves now? Unity 3 is not a simple leap forward, it is the first technical step to Unity a big player; also the high level agreements say Unity willingly aims to become a big player
that said let’s compare the prices of middleware provided by big players … you do the math!
I cannot believe Unity Pro is going jumping $1500 - 15000, but say 4000? Still cheap compared with direct opponents!
So are they really the new socialdemocrats guys in planet Earth? Or maybe are they planning to step into the contents market too? Or,taking a breath, they are simply growing Unity Pro from being a smart boat to being a fleet crusader? Different range, different price, different benefits, different public (but you always have Unity free to play with).
Buying now you freeze the price all along the Pro 3.x cycle, that is say 3 years? What are going to be Unity Technologies in late 2013?
UDK: only more expensive if you have massive success
C4: Cheaper on a team, near independent which platform. If you want to get sources on unity, then C4 is near granted definitely cheaper
Torque: we don’t talk about deads. Was once nice but extremely slow pace, massive turn around times for bug fix releases and more broken advertisements than working ones killed its reputation totally since TGEA days. iTorque 2D is still awaiting its first release that just works (even compile out of the box doesn’t) and does what it pretends to do and that although GG claims for soon a year to have a QA team now
Shiva: Shiva is already 4 figure cheaper due to not adding $1500++ per platform beyond desktop and has webplayer caching in, not sold extra at $$$ rates.
I think that basically covers all engines that are somewhere technically advanced or editor wise advanced enough to be considered as competition aside of those engines where you only get the prices after signing an NDA which are like UDK worlds more advanced than U3 is, more stable, come with sources and still cheaper for half the things that most do with unity.
and that without taking stuff into account like the fact that U3 is on the graphical level where the graphics technology (and most engines listed above aside of shiva) were 3-4 years ago already.
Also if you think that U3 is to cheap, then create a webplayer game that requires the cache licensing and you will likely change your mind.
Unity to me works out because its affordable, nice to use and has a somewhere “modern looking” feature set.
If it would cost $3000 with the current addon licensing and prices I wouldn’t even think about following it anymore as it just wouldn’t work out anymore at all.
You already by now pay $4500 for pro + iphone pro + android pro and another $2250 every 2 years basically for the upgrades unless there is a special price as in case of the upgrades to u3.
Right now its simple: U3 is in the position that UDK hasn’t added iphone yet and can’t target web at all, shiva on the other end is less advanced and not as well known yet but that will change with shiva 1.9 where they add something alike Unity Free just thta it will support all platforms, not just win-osx-desktop
we will see in what direction UT is going to correct the prices and features to handle that two main competitors to Unity
thanks a lot dreamora and all, you really opened my eyes about the business model (I was somewhat relating U3 with bigger engines than the ones you mention).
Unity Pro + add-on n.1 + add-on n.2 + … + add-on n.x is the model
so considering pro’s and con’s, the best option to me (very small fish) is stay put and market my projects by using unity 3 free
