XBLA and PSN Games to Mobiles Says Unity3D Boss
In Issue 1 of Grab It Indie Games Magazine – grab it here – we’ve got a huge interview with Unity Technologies CEO David Helgason. He and his company have been a catalyst for much of the indie revolution we’re seeing today, “democratising gaming” with the Unity3D game engine. In the wide-ranging chat, which details his early days coding in a basement, through his motives for driving the evolution of his middleware solution to the next wave of innovations in the pipeline, Helgason reveals all.
Perhaps the quote I found most intriguing related to the newly-formed partnerships between Unity3D and Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, arranged to facilitate more indie games on the consoles' download services. Here is the snippet in question – don’t forget to pick up Issue 1 to read the full feature, as well as 22 in-depth indie game reviews, 14 exclusive interviews, five big features and plenty more.
With the power of mobiles and tablets improving dramatically, and Unity now a key part of development on consoles, do you expect we’ll see more PSN and XBLA games also appearing on iOS?
I absolutely expect so. The big three console platforms have embraced us in a pretty deep way, where they support us with engineering resources. We work with them closely. In some cases, they’re actually giving away Unity software for free to their partners or everybody who wants to work on their platform. So, all the technology in next-gen consoles is linked very deeply to Unity. I think that’s because Unity is good, but also because these console makers want to open up their channels to different places and economies [like iOS games]. They’re not all exactly open in the same way - although I think they should be - but every single console is now more open than any single console ever was before.
This all happened in just a few years and again, we’re not going to take credit. But Unity makes it all so much more accessible. People who had theoretical access before, now have actual access as they have an easy path to take their productions to consoles, which is awesome. We also work closely with the console companies’ Artists and Repertoire teams, which is a closed process whereby we point the console makers to games we think are great. We don’t call the shots. We don’t make the decisions. But they are very open to what we have to tell them, and they are very open to our community. So I do expect games to come back the other way to iOS.
Helgason also supplied us with his top 10 games of 2013, which you can read here.
