I can’t wait for it!!
I totally agree with Harrison’s words:
“I’ve said this to David [Helgason, CEO, Unity Technologies] – I think they’re totally underestimating what’s going to happen when the Windows version ships.”
I think of it as a new revolution.
well, i am not sure if this is such a good idea. i am a experienced cross platform low level programmer and you should never underestimate the necessary effort to maintain a c/c++ program on different platforms.
yes, they can make more money, but on the other hand, they’ll have quite some work to port it - which might be better invested in new features or increased stability - and theire support will end up fixing windows specific problems and trying to tell whiny kiddies that even if they bought the indy version, they still wont finish theire game without learning how to program - i know this from similar windows only engines which i used quite a time. i got a mac just for using unity, such engines make only sense if you want to make money, there are enough opensource engines for playing around, so investing in a mac is not a big deal if you plan to compensate this by earning money.
…but ofcource you are writing this, because they have already confirmed a windows version and i just missed it 
- if that is the case, hopefully my little two cents make them think about it
this feels a little bit like your favourite band going mainstream. suddenly all the boring kids like them too and you can’t feel that special anymore…
but if it makes them a lot of money - they deserve it. I’m sure the community will grow and we’ll all profit from more know-how going around. please just keep the price low and don’t sell yourself to autodesk or the likes… :]
In 2.5, the editor is almost 100% C# with a thin layer of platform dependant stuff. The engine is already ported to multiple platforms and being maintained there, so I don’t think maintaining the editor on multiple platforms will be as huge an undertaking as such a task usually is.
When the windows users realize there’s a real game engine available to them, they’ll come running and drag Torque to the garbage bin where it belongs. They will certainly make a lot of money. However I expect the quality and tone of the community to drop precipitously.
I have the feeling that the great community is a function of it being mac only. Along with Unity Pro, there’s a built in higher price point because of that additional hardware requirement. So you know that everyone here, having spent $3500 minimum, is very serious about making games. Therefore, everyone is willing to help each other out because they know the other guy is committed and loves Unity as much as you.
What will happen to all those helpful people when the forums are flooded with questions such as, “Yo doodz, wut buttonz do eye hits 2 makes my MMO???”
I don’t think that the community will suffer from the release. It’ll get a larger user base and thus everything will scale up. We’ve already seen some people run amok in here and there has been the occasional “where is the button that will make my mmo for me?”.
I do not believe that the windows platform will offset the percentage of community members like that, but since the user base will grow, then so will the result of that percentage.
If you ask me, the happy-happy tone of the community that we all know and love can be attributed to the awesomeness of unity - not of the platform it operates on.
I think its more a matter of the people in here and neither platform or Unity as a product.
We just got to police it a bit and keep people from going below the belt.
It’s not 1990, but if you look what happened with all the “cool tools” that started out as “Mac only” from 1990 to 1995 (Photoshop, Premiere, Avid, Director, Authorware, Flash, … the list goes on) they all went cross-platform and then started treating Mac users as second class citizens*. This despite the fact that in the case of Photoshop (say) even today 50% of their users are Mac-based.
So, I’m guessing it’s that phenomenon people are worred about. Personally, I think it’s better for Unity to have a cross-platform IDE, but only if it continues to be at least as well-supported on Mac as it is on other platforms.
I can already imagine new features coming out that work under DirectX only. (And in some cases that’s not a bad thing; but imagine if we get to a situation like Flash which literally runs 50% slower on Mac OS on the same hardware.)
I’m not particularly worried at all. More users = more money for UT = more nice features for me to use. Worst case we can always just start ignoring the potential annoying posts in the forum. 
Aren’t we a bunch of nervous nellies. 
Yep, the user base is going to explode. The C# IDE is a great solution to keeping it all smoothly progressing at an equal rate on both(all) platforms, but the sheer size of the user base IS going to be a big adjustment. Don’t underestimate the damage that 10 questions about the MMO button a day can bring.
Now, that being said, we have the Mac-to-PC-transition advantage of a solid, mature user base going into the transition. It’s a group that values the condition of the forums (and irc for that matter.) I know this is true because threads like this are popping up.
One technical request to aid in the transition would be a search that actually works. Please, no Windows release before we have a search that actually works on this forum.
To end on a note of optimism, the explosion of new Unity developers means a greater range of talents and backgrounds with loads to offer and many more opportunities for collaboration. So… smile.
I’m all in for the looong awaited win release, this one made me really happy! :O)
The best thing about Unite2008 was seeing the windows version running.
I can’t wait to dump this horrid mac thing
I guess its horses for courses, but my whole development is Windows. 3DS Max, Photoshop, sound editing, video is all PC, so the learning curve for Unity has been a lot steeper than it could have been. I work mainly on a laptop so I can only work on Unity at work and not from home or on the weekends. The cost (financial and time) to go over to Mac is way too big. To buy a decent Mac, licences for CS, Maya, learn Maya, learn how to use a Mac is just too much. Also I understand that there is a lot of anxiety that a whole torrent of crap will be made, but there will be so many incredibly talents and creative people out there to don’t fit into the ‘Mac designers’ hole, who will now be able to show what they can do, it will balance out the crap.
Really looking forward to being on one platform again.
I’m really looking forward to the PC version of Unity. I’m trained in a PC background and a lot of tools I use simply aren’t available on Mac; so for me a PC version appeals a great deal.
I love the look of Unity and this community is great so I’m hyped for it.
I think expecting the PC users to be social network style txt pking newbs is a bit of a sweeping generalisation and a bit offensive to be honest. I’m a pure PC user and certainly do not fall into that category.
Also unity is more expensive than Torque and therefore it gets a lot of amateur kiddies surrounding it.
The thing is; the Torque kiddies are there because its cheap. Emergent’s Gamebryo kind of proves this; they have a casual edition which is around the same price range as Unity (given unity is per seat based) and they don’t have idiots on their developer forums.
I know you have to go through due dilligence with Emergent but given the casual developer market it would open it up to the type of small teams that are using Unity.
Thats because the idiots are on the whole unable to make use of powerful tools and won’t pay thousands for the software. So I suspect the “click a button to create an MMO” folks will still be a rare occurance to be laughed at freely
Consider them casual entertainment!
Oh and did they mention any kind of ETA on it as I’m not able to find any dates anywhere.
In the keynote we were told in the New Year, but I was told later before Christmas.
Or on the other hand… when it’s ready.
We have given no release date during the keynote. We generally do not give specific release dates until we are sure that we can hit the release date.
Wasn’t 2.5 said sometime in the New Year and the Windows version very close?
But yes, there was no release date given, just the indication of a kind of, maybe, possibly timeframe.
2.5 is the release that will include Windows.
is there some information already about the indie limitations once there will be a windows version?
will it publish to osx and windows? what about the watermark? will this be visible in the webplayer only? all the time? how big?
(the watermark is concerning me a little. i don’t mind showing the unity logo at the beginning or in the right click menu of the webplayer but an always visible watermark could be very annoying. watermarks are only ok for trial versions in my opinion. i also don’t see the watermark details mentioned on the current comparison page.)
good question! mac indie publishes to mac but not to win. if win indie publishes to win but not to mac, I’m pissed ;]
but my (uninformed) guess is that if you buy a license you’ll be able to work on mac and windows if you like. and indie will in both cases only publish to the web and maybe to the mac.
I really like that about Luxology: If you buy modo you get one key for Mac and one key for Windows and you are allowed to use both of them, just not at the same time I guess. That’s how you make your users feel loved…
Gamebryo has a casual edition for under $1,500?
When they announced it I looked into it and unless you had already shipped a game they wanted $5,000.
What pricing are they currently offering?
Sammual