Unity Union
polycounter lvl 15
http://unity3d.com/union/
Thoughts on this?
Sound pretty promising to me. It'll be nice to have something to work with other than Apple's App store.
Thoughts on this?
Sound pretty promising to me. It'll be nice to have something to work with other than Apple's App store.
Replies
iPhone and Android let anyone put a game up. Are they negotiating with Valve for you? That doesn't seem worth 20%. If you're doing a web game, it should be F2P or you're not paying attention, which means you don't need to be on anyone's store. Now, if my 20% went to them integrating a virtual currency platform. . . maybe.
If they have to port your game to a different platform they charge you an additional cost that is an advance on royalties, just like the old traditional publishers. If they were doing marketing for you, adding in social network services, something like that, I could see it being worth it.
The only other explanation is that it's aimed at consoles (or it's just a bad deal).
As Doc Rob says, there are so many outlets to get your game into already without needing a 'middleman' to get it in there for you.
But to charge £1000+ up front for the engine, then ask for 20% of all sales as well for basically communicating with a distribution outlet, is a bit steep if you ask me.
The impression I've got with Unity recently is that they're starting to see people make some successful games with it (Samurai 2 for example) and want in on the profits. Also the asset store... another source of income.
Their engine and toolchain is very good. The games being made with it would stand a much better chance of being big successes if they were bolstered by all of those surrounding services.
But, again, if they're charging you 20% to get you an XBLA contract, that's actually reasonable as I've head that can be a very tough nut to crack.
http://vimeo.com/17098272
From what I understand the point of Union is not to get your game into easy markets like the web, iPhone, or Android but instead to help you port and sell it to other emerging game platforms like Nokia Symbian, set top boxes, the splashtop OS you find when first turning on a netbook, and HP Palm.
Doesn't UDK iphone also charge you 20% except you get nothing outside of the engine itself?
I'm in a position where I'd as a single person and indie developer would pay those 20% if it meant I could get my game out there in way more ways than I'd be able to myself.
So now the only price I will have to pay is getting it onto Apple products.
But if I wanted to get it out to other platforms then I think 20% is...near the edge of acceptable. I think 10% is a lot more fair.
I think it's 25% of all sales after $5000.
But the most important factor is that UDK is free up front, whereas Unity Pro is $1500, + $400 for iOS or $1500 for iOS Pro.
So a minimum of $1900 up front before you've even published your game.
Add in this new 20% for Union, and then look at how much it would cost. If you sell 10,000 1$ apps, then you've paid $1900 for Unity up front, + $2000 in royalties to Unity... leaving you with around $6100 (minues Apples royalty).
10,000 sales in UDK would leave you with $8,750 ($10,000 - 25% of $5000) (again, minus Apples royalty).
So if you're confident you can generate more than 10k sales (or if you sell your app for more than $1), then Unity is the more attractive choice, but 10k is a pretty large number that many devs may never reach.
Not to mention UDK is arguably the more powerful, and user friendly engine... especially for those of us who've been using UE3 for some years. That's not to say Unity is a difficult engine to work with, but there's still that additional learning involved that may not be necessary if you're familiar with UDK.
But yes, if you're never going get more than ten thousand sales in your lifetime on all your games combined.
Assuming you go for Unity free, and the basic iOS license... which does leave out a fair few features. Either way, that's still $400 more than UDK.
$301
Epic takes $99 upfront, also the 25% on all above $5000 is not per title, it's for after the $5000 you earn as a company, after that all games you make on UDK will be 25% from the first sale.
Ah I didn't realise it was not on a per-app basis.
doubt it. these platforms need you to be checked out.
20% is cheap for publishing rights on emerging platforms. I hand over 30% to apple, and traditionally that too is cheap - you want to look at what publishers were getting from developers back in the SNES days. 20% is cheap.