Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a Unity Game Console? Maybe Portable one with actual Controller or maybe a Unity Game Console like OUYA? this way we can export games from Unity Directly to Unity Platform, not have to worry about exporting to these other Platforms! ofcoarse it would only be cool if this Unity (dream) Console is a major Hit and everyone wants one ofcoarse lol!
It was just a thought… would be cool I think… what do you think?
Why when Unity can publish to the large quantity of Android based handhelds that are coming out? And what would be the market for it outside of “Unity developers?” Why would anyone buy a Unity specific console? What would that bring to the table?
Optimization…
Unity has like 1.2million registered users, and 200,000 of them are monthly users, others would buy it but as to developing for it they can port or those 200,000 should be able to make a few games for it?
Why not?
Well… when we build a game to Android it needs to compress the whole “running gear” on it, this makes my current builds go from 49kb on WebPlayer to 7.4mb(IIRC) on Android so IMO a Unity console could be a ARM based console that runs something like the web player that can hold all the needs of Unity but then games don’t need to hold it making it the best for downloading small games!
Unity is a software developer who specializes in building to nearly every other platform there is. There’s no reason for them to move into hardware.
What optimisation? The gains would be so minimal as to be completely pointless. And if they wanted to keep costs down, odds are it’d just be Android anyway.
Those numbers aren’t near enough to bother trying to support for a mobile ecosystem.
No, this doesn’t work. You need to say WHY.
A whole extra 7 megs would mean a lot more if it were 1993 and not 2013. Storage is impossibly cheap now. You can get a 32 gig SD card for $25. That’s 7 megs 4681 times.
So in other words…a console-ified PC or android basically? Like what Valve and Ouya are doing?
Without knowing much about optimizations I would think that this would be similar as to how it works on consoles?
Why not?
Why did people buy the NES why did people buy the original Xbox?
Saving 7 megs every download would make a difference were I live… but that is just the beginning… Imagine it you don’t have to worry about resolution or aspect ratio, Unity could tell you right in the editor if it will work well, even just a one button port because the controller could have a built in touch screen (Input.GetTouch) ,have joysticks(Input.GetAxis), vibrate (Mobile.vibration) then you click build and it sends it right over to the console, then from there just upload it to the store and start selling from the first steps you just have to deal with one company.
Once again, this isn’t enough to justify UT developing their own hardware.
Because they’re goddamn tiny.
People bought the original NES because it was a low cost entertainment device that was really the first of its kind on the market after a near complete collapse of the gaming industry. It was also the most powerful home console in its price range. People bought the original Xbox because of Halo.
7 megs means nothing. Seriously 7 megs is the size of a jpeg straight off a digital camera. Also I don’t have to worry about aspect ratio or resolution because the editor already tells me that. I don’t have to worry about controller inputs because the APIs on the platforms I develop for already handle that. None of these things matter because Unity already handles this shit.
Why not?
Why?
So to you it is unfathomable that a console made for Unity could bring something new to the table and sell?
You missed my point.
Developing a console is a multi-million dollar endeavor. Design, engineering, production, marketing, support, etc. There is zero demand for a Unity console, and there are several other consoles already on the market, they have more experience, a larger user-base and a lot more money. Unity creating a console would almost definitely kill the company.
Again, there’s no reason for it. And “why not” is not a good reason to spend millions in an industry in which you have no experience.
I can see this is going to turn into a long speculative thread 
I think it’s a bit of a pie in the sky idea. I don’t want to use the common argument that it's not what unity is about because that’s based on the past and the future can be different. But that said Unity is more about providing a single abstraction layer on top of multiple pieces of hardware that allows the developer to mostly not have to think about what platform it’s on and therefore target multiple platforms. Even if Unity had their own console it would be only a small portion of the total market out there even if it were highly successful, people will still want to get their games onto webplayers and pc and mac and linux and apple devices and xbox and so on. When Unity adds support for new devices that does in a way bring unity to that device, so for example Unity on Ouya turns the ouya platform into a piece of hardware that you can use Unity to make games for, making it in a sense a Unity device … this is Unity’s master plan you see, world domination by covert borg activity ;D
This is an interesting idea although there is a slim chance of it actually happening in the immediate future.
Expanding from the software territory into hardware territory is difficult. Although, as game engine makers, Unity technologies might have some advantages. If this new console was coupled with new innovative input devices or something like that it might give them an edge.
Still, the idea is not completely far fetched either. If Valve(Game Engine and Game distribution), can enter the console space, why not unity? If hypothetically Unity were able to successfully market their console, this might also give them an additional market advantage over other game engines.
The whole software space in general and game software space in particular is going through so many fluctuations and transitions that nothing can be ruled out. What might seem a grandiose idea now might become inevitable 5 years from now.
Brave New World!
If Unity would just cache some of my assets so when I hit “Switch platform” it didn’t take a long time… I haven’t changed my skybox for 3 months, but every time I hit switch it needs to translate it again.
If you hit the build button, and it built for all the platforms at one time… made a folder with Mac, PC, Linux, Web, iOS and Android versions all at once… would you still want a Unity console?
Easiest way for Unity to destroy the relationships it worked so hard to establish with Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft: enter the market to compete with all of them.
A very important point to note.
Still, if I were to play the devil’s advocate - you might have noted various “The console is dead. Mobile devices are rising from their ashes” threads right here in this gossip section.
Imagine a variant of that scenario. The consoles market becomes heavily fragmented and these individual relationships that you speak about become less and less important.
As has been established in those threads, consoles are nowhere near dead. The mobile market is growing, yes, but its certainly not replacing any other gaming device (console, desktop, portable or otherwise).
I agree that consoles are not dead, but they are mutating heavily. More specifically, consoles and mobile gaming devices are mutating in the same direction.
If for example something like the Ouya were to succceed/establish a successful ‘Android console market’ and then followed by the big names such as samsung, LG etc what will the ‘console’ market then look like?
With those kind of fluctuations will the lesser console makers even have the appetite to maintain their own console OSes?
All multimillion dollar questions.
Plus, there are already too many platforms systems to support … Would not change a thing for a Unity dev, but for the world of gamedev as a whole, it would be one more grain in the growing ocean of noise.
If one wants to play games, he buys one of the 3 main consoles, or a PC, which is already a wide enough choice range.
All good points! This was just a fun idea I had… thought I’d just throw it out there and see where it goes… = )
My vision about the future of Unity is a open distribution Channel. Not like Union, but like an extension of the Asset Store but for games (that anyone can buy and download, not just Unity developers). I’ve predicted the Asset Store a year before we heard about it. Now, I’m predicting the Unity Game Store! I can read peoples mind becareful, yeah i have lot of powa! 