It’s a bad day to be a console developer
Bad news if you are a Unity console developer or if you are considering a career in console game development on the Unity platform, since June 30th any new Unity projects will need a Unity Pro license if they wish to publish the fruits of their labour on console platforms.
The folks over at Gamasutra had a chat with an un-named Unity spokesperson who had this to say:
“developing for consoles is a complex undertaking for any studio and Unity has always recommended Unity Pro for development on these platforms.”
It is worth noting that the update only affects the newer versions of Unity at this time so if you are developing on an older version of the software you do not need pro at this time.
While the requirement of pro is restricting enough of already the news becomes a little worse if you are looking to develop for Xbox. To give you the short version, Sony and Nintendo have been known to give keys for development platforms to developers wishing to make games for them but at this time Microsoft does not offer such a service. This means that if you want to develop using Unity for Xbox then you’re going to need to fork over $1,800 for the privilege.
If you wish to read more details about the changes to unity including what Microsoft has to say about the change please check out Gamasutra’s article on the matter.
