Unity3D News - EA Partnership and more!

Unity3D have long been supporters of high quality 3D gaming not just for Android but for mobile/console gaming in general. With their release of Unity3D for Android not too long ago they have been aggressive in their support for Android game development handing out free Nexus Ones for pre-order, free software to schools and more. They have been busy!

The latest news from the Unity3D crew comes in 2 parts. First Unity3D and EA have gone into a long term partnership regarding EA game development for all platforms including Android. Secondly they have just updated their overall SDK for all platforms which comes with new features, improved performance and a whole lot more.

As part of this multi-year enterprise agreement between EA and Unity3D:

• EA will use utilize the Unity development platform across multiple franchises and genres
• The EA enterprise license of Unity enables every EA studio and developer across the globe full access to the entire range of Unity products from web and mobile to consoles and beyond

Unity3D will be used in most major EA releases for the Android platform including the upcoming Madden 2011. If you are a game developer and are looking to get into 3D game development on the Android platform then you may want to consider Unity3D for Android. It'll set you back some decent coin but it will be worth it.

With that said, Unity3D's new update boosts a huge amount of new features and improvements to existing ones. Interesting things developers have done with Unity3D include: new unique control interfaces, real-time sports broadcasting, new ways of interacting with social networks, new ways to advertise products, augmented reality (AR) games and much more.

Some of the 100+ new features:

• Unified Editor - Deploy to any supported platform from one project in one editor
• Beast Lightmapping - The industry’s strongest lightmapper is now included in Unity
• Deferred Rendering - AAA class rendering available on web, consoles and standalone
• Occlusion Culling - Completely new Umbra-powered PVS solution
• Source-Level Debugger - Single step through code, variable inspection and other  development painkillers
• Audio Filters - Perfect FMOD-powered ambiance effects with integrated editing
• Lens Effects - AAA post filters ready for use in games or to be studied in source form
• Performance - Overall performance improvement by up to 10x

Unity3D is quickly becoming a one-stop shop for everything relating to 3D game development. However if you can't afford Unity3D and Unity3D Pro for Android there are alternatives you can use which we have listed in our resource section. Unity3D itself is free for developers, the Pro versions is where the money comes in.

Developer Website: Unity3D