What do you guys think about this? Surprised me to learn that more than 50% of games on Nintendo’s platforms are built on Unity.
Edit: Just in case of confusion, this isn’t an old article; it was interviewed very recently. What’s changed was that Unity used to advertise itself as 50% of mobile games; now, it says it’s 50% of all games, period. Which I’m quite happy about as an indie 
Not surprising at all. Unity dominates indie and lower budget title space.
Sounds like trump speak…is there actual stats to even shed a bit of credibility or just assuming its correct?
Seems about right to me. 50% of all games probably refers to the number of games developed, and doesn’t reflect the revenue or size of the games.
Unity pretty much has all of the basement games. Unity has most of the indie game studios (about 90% in my area). Unity appears to have about 10% of AAA studios based on informal steam surveys.
Add those numbers up, and take into account that basement and indie game studios probably release 100x the number of games AAA studios do, and its easy to get to 50% of games.
Unity dominates the indie space and the mobile space, and between those two that accounts for the vast majority of games released in terms of just quantity. Unity jumped on Switch support early as well, so not surprised there.
Unity is weak in the mid to AAA budget range. AAA games often use in house engines so no surprise there. The mid budget games to just below AAA are probably the best place for Unity to expand. I suspect SRP, ECS, and the Jobs system were specifically undertaken to target the needs of those game developers.
Totally strong assumptions…but what about actual facts and figures…has google ever released anything about what is used to create whats on the store for instance?
For example: Google Play Store - statistics & facts | Statista
Well, Unity games do phone home to Unity by default. So Unity has an idea of how many games are made with their engine already. It wouldn’t be too difficult to just compare those numbers Unity is getting for their games against the new releases on the major game marketplaces to come up with a good estimate of Unity’s total market share.
It like the X-Files to me…I want to believe but the way CEO’s are talking these days…
I’d imagine the majority of switch titles are unity, yeah… and it took pretty hard work on Unity’s part to get there (meaning how useful it is to indies)
Do you have some data that contradicts what Unity is claiming?
Lets look at this for a moment:
For instance…
Consider Epic and Fortnite is insane. People also debated why Unity never created their own flagship game…Since the latter is on track to finish with 3.5 Billion $ revenue this year…It makes one wonder why Unity? Could that not have been you?
And…consider…If you say basement devs/indie devs/small devs etc etc… and they go by that…thats not much money made by the sounds of it.
So unity has 50% of the crappy games market?
Not trying to be harsh but that’s how it sounds to me.
Also consider: Apple has a share of the smartphone market and look at their value…50% of a small pie is not a lot.
I think you’re misunderstanding the math of this. Unity said that half of all games are made with Unity. Fortnite is very popular, but still just 1 game. Being popular doesn’t change the fact it is 1 game.
I hear ya but it sounds like it’s reaching…its really just nothing but fluff…What does that even mean…50% of all games…as what 95% of games make no money?
Would you rather 50% of something 1 billion ? or 50% of 3.5 billion
It’s not reaching at all. You’re the one trying to conflate “game” with “success.”
But their statement made no claims about revenue, total downloads, etc. You seem to be projecting your own bias onto what is essentially a very simple statement on their part. A statement of which they should very easily be able to determine the facts on based on their own data.
Revenue of games made with Unity is not something they are even in a position to track, so I’m really unclear what you want Unity to do there.
That’s exactly…its basically talking about nothing…no bias…just see lots of CEO’s making statements like this.
“What powers Unity is a simple philosophy, which is the world is a better place with more creators,” he said. “We drive ourselves to put the most powerful tools possible in the hands of creators, small and large so they can realize their dreams.”
I am not hating…I just wanted to see more then just fluff words…because very successful games from unity has yet to happen. (Successful as in Hundreds of Millions)
How exactly is Unity supposed to know how much revenue games with Unity are making?
All the best games out there have no secret about how much they made or what was used to develop it. You have heard of google right?
I will leave on that…I would like like to see Unity themselves or some other developer actually make it using Unity…
If only to prove it possible and not that your left to be a indie company.
Someday there will be a first to 100million$ game from Unity…but if all the games combined on unity don’t make as much as that 1 game…something to think about. No hate…just thoughts.
Kerbal Space Program
Ori and the Blind Forest
Grow Home
Shadow Tactics
House Flipper
Night in the Woods
Battletech
Gone Home
Tacoma
Cities: Skylines
Hearthstone
Hand of Fate
The Forest
Thomas Was Along
Volume
Oxenfree
Shadowrun Returns
Wasteland 2
Pillars of Eternity
Furi
Firewatch
Slime Rancher
Sunless Sea
Broforce
Beseige
Assault Android Cactus
That’s just stuff I remember.
Every statistics from source of target company will be biased.
Hence no point is showing specific graphs etc. If he is wrong, chances are, some other markets will point it out, or will argue. Until then, is fact unless disproved. Just like history.
Appears that revenue were not the contexts of interview. So is irrelevant.
Point is to indicate Unity success so far.
Not sure how vailid this graph is but here we go, from 2014 (2016 article)
https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2016/03/24/engine-dominating-gaming-industry-right-now/
Another one [very recent]
“I got tired of people arguing back and forth over the popularity of game engines like Unity and Unreal, and I can’t find any existing data about this, so I made a script to help me research all the notable* Steam games, and made a graph out of my findings.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/8s20qp/i_researched_the_market_share_of_game_engines_on/
"Disclaimer
I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this data. There were simply too many games with unknown engines, corrupted data due to the game engine infobox having extra data, and searching one game’s name returning another, more popular game’s Wikipedia page. Also AAA companies might put out more Steam apps for a single game than small developers, which might skew the data. I invite you to take a look at the source code and raw excel document, make modifications and draw your own conclusions!"
These still not the best graphs I would like to see. But they give some info. How accurate, I won’t tell. But is quite difficult to find good market share comparison. Probably with more digging.
If images are too big let me know, I will put in spoilers.