I haven’t read through this entire article, but if you watch the first video on the page you will notice that they have Max and the Magic Marker running on the Windows Phone 7 device which is a game made in Unity. It could be using a different engine, but I hope that this is evidence of support for WM7 since I am going to be getting me one once my current phone contract is up this year. Anyway, enjoy the post.
I’m not sure if this is related, but Sony is going to be coming out with a phone (new sony ericsson) that is Android 3.0 but Sony is considering it a game platform and the phone will have physical d pad and buttons that slide out, similar to the psp go.
I know Unity will support Android so I thought it was exciting.
I saw that too, but when it comes to brand loyalty between the two I will lean more towards Xbox since I have had it longer and the majority of my friends play Xbox. I have all of the new consoles and the 360 is my favorite. Plus, I have a Zune account with their music subscription service, so to get that same experience integrated with whatever phone I get is awesome. Plus all of the avatar integration to the phone is really cool. Sure it’s a novelty, but its a welcomed novelty.
Everything has their pro’s and con’s. I’m a Sony person for sure, but IM NOT saying I hate Microsoft at all, I have a Zune account as well. Better than Steve Jobs and that awful Mac crap. 
But to be honest, I think Microsoft’s Kinect is crap. Sony’s Move I think is better, and I’m not saying that as a fan boy.
Also where is this video being filmed? It seems so sketch.
I’m not sure about where it was filmed but I would guess either in an Engadget office or some Microsoft office considering it sounds like he is talking to a Microsoft representative. I don’t know how you could say the videos seem sketch though.
And as for the Kinect vs Move thing, I lean more towards Kinect. I was at this last E3 and from the demos I have seen of the two systems, the Kinect seems like it brings a completely different experience. Most of the Move demo’s I saw were just Wii games with better graphics. I saw a lot of flicking and waggling like you see on the Wii with nothing leveraging the accuracy of position like the other demos I have seen them do before. Either way, I plan on buying both of them just because I think they both have their strong points.
But to get back on topic, I sure hope that Unity is coming out with a Windows Mobile 7 compiler soon. I don’t have a mac so I can’t develop iPhone/Pad/Touch games. I have an android phone now (G1) but it’s not powerful enough for me to justify getting the Android licence, plus I am going to ditch the Android platform soon anyway.
Has anyone heard anyone from Unity mention any support for Windows Mobile 7 yet?
It pretty much can’t happen since Unity itself would have to be rewritten in C#.
–Eric
That’s a shame. I can see this new OS being a top contender with the iPhone or any Android device. I would expect that Unity would eventually look into a way to have Unity games on the platform since that is their entire strategy with “Build Once, Deploy Anywhere.” If not I will jump back into XNA programming since I have played with it before and the API is quite nice.
Unlikely
Microsoft has lost its major supporters for new platforms before they even started when they pissed of HP and others with a totally tablet unusable W7 spinoff.
All who are interested in this market by now either have bought a company with background in it or use something thats standard in the market and Windows Mobile 7 definitely won’t be it (the interface is neither intuitive nor productive, its just different and that won’t get them past the expectations people have due to iPhone - Android - WebOS)
Also, unlike US missbelieves, the Zune does not exist as a reasonable platform outside of them at all, so its not like the WinMobile 7 phones can just “pickup” in most places. They can be happy if anyone is going to offer them at all actually.
Its build ones deploy everywhere yes. But that everywhere has a * and that * says “which supports native code”. Thats why Android had to wait that long, cause without the NDK having reasonable support it was impossible.
Unity doesn’t support XNA and there were no mentions the last times the topic came up. X360 support was clearly stated as XDK only (so native code too)
I’m sure we will see unity on that platform some day, but not cause Unity supports XNA, more cause Microsoft realizes that if they want realistic support from more taxing things like game engines, they must open up a native code path. XNA etc is nice if you have 3 dual thread processors to compensate for the overhead as on the x360 or a total overpower as on the desktop.
But on the phone it means that they will end with games that are 1-2 generations behind iphone / android ndk, just cause their hardware will not be the 50% faster to compensate “in generation” for it
I’m not sure about world-wide, but in my opinion, WP7 looks like it has a lot of potential here in the US.
It may take another 2 or 3 years before we see it really giving Android and iOS a run for its money, but it definitely has what looks like a good foundation to build on.
I know that I’m looking forward to it.
As for Unity and XNA…
While I know that it would be pretty impractical for Unity to rewrite their engine just for XNA, what I think would be a better short term solution would be to create an editor that plugs in to something that already exists for XNA.
I’d love to see Unity for XNA, but until that day years and years away, I’d be happy with just being able to import art assets into something that is somewhat artist friendly.
Man I would pay $1500 for Unity XNA…
make that *5 and you are in a reasonable range for the non-pro license if the whole engine has to be rewritten for the first time ever for non-native 
Unity already uses C#. Unity - Manual: Scripting
I think you meant to say C++. That may be coming with the Unity iPhone Plan B.
No unity does not use C#
The scripting and editor use C# but unity itself is pure C / C++ code, thats exactly where the problem comes from.
And Plan B only offers you the possibility to skip mono for scripting, it does not change the engine in any way (you already by no include a static library or two more precisely: libiPhone, libiPhoneNetwork
No. Unity has C# scripting, but the engine is not written in C#. Only managed code, not native C++ code, is allowed to run on Windows Phone 7. Therefore the entire engine would have to be rewritten in managed code, which is a massive task, especially for an OS with an uncertain future. (If they’d released this OS 2-3 years ago, it would be in a much better position.)
–Eric
I agree with WinningGuy … after all, how could you not when a guy like that is obviously the winner. But yeah, I don’t know about the worldwide opinion but WP7 has good potential here in the USA. And yes it may take some time for the number of WM7 users to get up there with iPhone or Android users, but I don’t see why Unity wouldn’t keep an eye on the growth on the platform. And if it does prove to be a good platform then I don’t see why Unity wouldn’t work with Microsoft to find a way to get the engine working with the OS.
According to math and physics, infinity is no valid time interval for measuring relative differences. And that would be the earliest point in time at which it would reach them.
It can hope to easily surpass webos and blackberry and previous windows mobile OS userbases, but thats really is it, even within the USA.
I’m sure they don’t ignore it.
But without a 300M install base its even less a viable platform than Linux and linux is already from the “perhaps somewhere in a more distant future when there is one linux” group
Wait, a very, very dumb question I goy :
If Unity is already able to export to XBox 360, why wouldn’t it be able to export to another similar Microsoft framework ?
Windows Mobile 7 is advertised to be fully compatible with XBox games, so I guess it’s not that impossible …
edit : I read the topic again, and better noticed Dreamora’s post :
Ok, but basically, if it can do it on a Microsoft platform, why wouldn’t it do it for another ?
I’m not sure Microsoft has any interest to make WM7 development not really similar to XBox.
Because you can use native code on the 360, and you can’t on Windows Phone 7. This is also why you can’t use Unity on XNA (no native code allowed).
–Eric
Because its not similar.
XNA has as much to do with the XDK, as the Win32 API has with Cocoa on the iphone: they both are used with some C syntax
but thats it.
it was advertised to be compatible with xna games, thats not the same as xdk games which run native code which is not supported on the W7 mobile.
Ok, thanks guys, you’re officially super-fast 