50 years after the first cellphone call was made in 1973 by Martin Cooper, the World Economic Forum reports that there are now more mobile device subscriptions (8.58 billion) in use than people in the world (7.95 billion). Mobile device ubiquity is undeniable, and the smartphone market is only set to grow. The global smartphone market is projected to have a compounded annual growth rate of 3.4% (2024-2028) and is expected to reach $0.5 trillion in 2024, according to Statista.These devices present a valuable opportunity for advertisers, offering significant campaign scalability using a high-ROAS channel: on-device advertising.On-device advertising connects you directly with OEMs and carriers, placing your app in front of users at the most impactful moments of the device lifecycle, like device set-up and OS updates. The rich device experience of on-device advertising then engages and retains customers, resulting in an expected conversion rate upwards of 20%.The most widely used mobile OS in the world is Android, with 70% of the global market. And the world's largest supplier of Android smartphone devices is Samsung, with 1.03 billion users.Let’s dive into the Samsung smartphone market, user base, and new technology in 2024.Samsung in numbersAs of January 2024, Samsung has a market cap of $370 billion (1) Samsung is a Top 5 Global Brand according to Interbrand Best Global Brands 2023, with a brand value of $91.4 billion, a 4% YoY increase from 2022 (2) In 2023 alone, Samsung shipped 226.6 million smartphones worldwide (3)Samsung accounted for 19.4% of total smartphone shipments worldwide, coming second only to Apple at 20% (4) Identifying the over 1B Samsung usersIn 2023 there were 1.03 billion active Samsung smartphone users - and that number is expected to grow in 2024. Before running on-device campaigns on Samsung devices, it’s important to understand the users you’ll be reaching in order to optimize your campaigns as effectively as possible.1. Most Samsung users are Gen XGeneration X ( 1965 – 1980) and Millennials (1981 – 1996) make up around 90% of both Apple and Samsung’s user base. While the distribution on iOS devices skews younger in the US, Android users tend to be Gen X or older.Gen X males have the largest labor force participation rate in the US, 90% according to the US Department of Labor. As a result, Gen X makes up a large portion of purchasing power in the US - they have money to spend. This means that by making Samsung a core channel of your marketing strategy, you’re reaching an audience with great influence over household and company decisions. 2. Samsung users care more about features than designAndroid users are 57% more likely to prefer a full-featured, advanced device that’s less attractive as opposed to a sleek device that only does a few things according to ansonalex. With all Samsung smartphones and tablets using the Android operating system, this statistic can be extended to Samsung users.Samsung is known to push the envelope on innovation with every phone they release, and its users put a lot of value in the tech advancements that have improved device functioning. For example, the ability to work on two apps on the same screen at the same time with a Samsung device is much more important than the size and color of the device.By advertising directly on Samsung devices, you’re reaching early adopters. They are likely to look past the potential challenges of being the first to jump into a new technology. Samsung users will embrace on-device advertising placements as a new and unique feature on their device - like Aura’s Game Spotlight, which puts a new game on users’ phones every week based on their current preferences, or Aura’s In-Life App Discovery, which recommends your app to users during device updates. 3. Samsung owners have high brand loyaltySamsung leads Android phones with 63.9% trade-in brand loyalty, while just 10.8% of users stick with other Android devices according to Tom's Guide. Once consumers start using Samsung devices, they’re likely to stay loyal to the brand.When running UA campaigns, your goal is to acquire users who remain loyal in the long term. Advertising on Samsung devices means reaching users that are dedicated to the brands they engage with.You’re also reaching the generation with the highest likelihood of making brand loyalty a priority - Gen X has the highest rate of brand loyalty of any generation according to Streng. All of this means that if you reach users with your food delivery app early on in the Samsung device lifecycle, users are likely to stick with you.Trends and innovations from SamsungLet’s dive into the innovations and trends shaping the Samsung brand in 2024.An equitable and secure AI-enabled tomorrowAt a CES 2024 press conference Samsung unveiled its AI for All strategy. Jong-Hee Han, Vice Chairman, CEO, and Head of Samsung’s Device eXperience Division, shared how Galaxy AI-enabled Samsung devices will improve the lives of consumers “in the background.” He stressed the importance of AI’s role in enhancing connected experiences.Included in the presentation were a number of Samsung products with integrated AI features to create a more intuitive and convenient user experience. One of the standouts for mobile marketers was Samsung’s renewed focus on security and privacy across devices. In the new hyper-connected era that Samsung is helping to build, security solutions are foundational.A case in point is the Samsung Knox Matrix, providing end-to-end encryption across Samsung Galaxy smartphones and smart TVs. It works by allowing Samsung devices to monitor, identify, and isolate security threats across one another.For advertisers, this is good news. A more secure mobile market means a more trusting pool of users, who’ll be more likely to engage with ads and apps knowing that their private data remains safe and encrypted.The Samsung Galaxy S24 has lift-offIn late January 2024, Samsung announced the global release of its anticipated Galaxy S24 smartphone. While every edition of the Galaxy series offers new features and improvements for users, the Galaxy S24 promises to be one of the most transformative due to its Galaxy AI capabilities. Following the announcement, pre-orders for the device skyrocketed, with a double digit increase in pre-order sales compared to previous models according to Samsung.TM Roh, President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung describes the device as “our initial step toward a new era of AI phones that go beyond the current smartphone.” AI features are set to include Live Translate, Chat Assist, and a suite of new AI-powered camera tools.With consumers showing considerable interest in AI-enabled devices and Samsung at the forefront of these innovations in consumer goods, many consumers may look to switch to Samsung as their mobile brand of choice. This could represent a major shift for advertisers, with more users choosing Samsung, and therefore Android, opening a larger market for on-device advertising.The future is foldableHalf of US consumers are either very (16%) or somewhat (34%) interested in buying a foldable phone as their next device according to CNET, and Samsung is the first-mover in this cutting-edge technology. In 2019, Samsung released the foldable Galaxy Z series and the end of 2023 saw the most recent addition join the fold, the Galaxy Z Fold5.Watch how they're made here: https://news.samsung.com/global/video-behind-the-foldable-phones-in-our-pocketsThe Galaxy Z Fold5 offers the greatest comfort and display quality yet in the series, giving consumers all the features and tools the Galaxy Z series is known for, but now slimmer and brighter.These quality of life improvements are expected to boost foldable device adoption. And that’s good news for advertisers. Foldable devices offer new ways to keep users engaged and entertained with your ads, such as ads that allow users to reveal more ad content as they fold or unfold their devices. Foldable screens also mean more room to fill your ad with more important and detailed information.Learn more about leveraging foldable phones for your app’s advertising strategy.If you’re not already leveraging Samsung for your advertising strategy, it may be time to look into it. After all, the users, technology, and innovation are some of the best in the world, making these devices an incredibly valuable channel.Start advertising on Samsung devices with AuraCompanies Market CapInterbrandStatistaStatista 

Tomas Sala, BAFTA-winning solo developer behind The Falconeer, won the Indie CommUnity Choice Award during gamescom 2023. Ahead of the game’s upcoming multiplatform release on March 26, we interviewed him to learn more about why he’s revisiting the world of The Falconeer with his upcoming multiplatform game, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles.Continue reading for insights on how Bulwark plays with genre, the reason Tomas designs for gamepad before keyboard and mouse, and why he thinks indies should consider going all-in on IP.Thanks for jumping on a call with us, Tomas, and congratulations on your Indie CommUnity Choice Award win! To start things off, can you give the community some background on your upcoming game, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles, and how it fits into The Falconeer’s wider universe?Bulwark is set in the same world, and it's a continuation of the same story, following the events of the big war in The Falconeer. Players are dealing with the aftermath: Everything’s decimated, all the gold and treasure has been taken, and many people have left. In this post-war scenario, everybody's just trying to get along and not default to old factional conflicts. So that’s the backdrop for this game – refugees trying to build a new settlement and make a better world for themselves. As you build out your settlement, you'll meet other people and sometimes get pulled back in old patterns, get into fights, things like that.Why did you choose to set Bulwark in the same universe?There are definitely practical considerations. I've deeply invested in building out my own toolset over the past decade – there's the matter of reusing what you have. This approach is opposite of the game-jam mentality, where you reinvent the wheel and make something new to see if it sticks. You instead have to work with what you’ve got.I had a look at The Falconeer and said to myself, "Well, what're the best and worst things about this game?" The worst thing was its niche, ‘90s throwback genre, which, gameplay-wise, wasn't for everybody. The best things were the worldbuilding, visual aesthetic, emotional layering, and personal narrative surrounding the gameplay. Those things were super strong and carried the game, so I wanted to keep them. I decided to let go of the genre (which I personally enjoyed) and go in a different direction to see if it would resonate more with players.For me, it's about all that. Doing an analysis of what you've done, seeing what's worth continuing, and expanding on that and making it better. I’d already spent seven years or so investing in The Falconeer’s world. There are definitely rough edges and things that need to be improved, but if I just dropped it completely, all that effort is gone. That's what I don't understand business-wise in what we've been telling indies. “Make small, cool games.” No. Make a world, and tell a story that gets players invested in the IP.Going back to what you were saying about genre… From Black Salt Games’ DREDGE to Cosmo D’s Betrayal at Club Low, more devs are combining genres for new gameplay experiences. You call Bulwark a “chill grand strategy” game – why did you decide to mix two genres, especially ones that seem so oppositional?I want to see new things every day in what I do. Replicating somebody else's game is boring – I wouldn't be able to do that. Within the “chill” genre, there’s something that I really like and got inspired by. It’s the opposite of the “hardcore efficiency mindset” where you want to beat the game, you want to win, you want to be the fastest, the best, the most efficient… That’s our mechanical brain talking. But there’s also the dreamy side of our brains that’s more focused on enjoying the fantasy of a game. It's not concerned about winning.Creativity is what I'm interested in for Bulwark. Giving people that sense of enjoying building their own base. That's the whole essence of the “chill” genre – being in the fantasy and creating. And then what I add is the history, the events of The Falconeer. Even though that part’s not super chill in Bulwark, it makes the world feel alive.How are you balancing creativity and conflict in the gameplay to keep players engaged?It's definitely a balancing act. Even though I enjoy looking at my own buildings for hours, I realize that for some people, it's more interesting if something gets blown up after a while.Looking back at The Falconeer, it was a very artistic, personal game. It’s in the genre I liked when I was young. It's about fraughtness and burnout and depression, and it’s heavy. Because I worked on the game alone, it didn't get a lot of testing. For Bulwark, I wanted to approach things differently. I decided to do an evolving early access demo to get players’ opinions, see where I was losing them, and figure out how to keep them on board. I'm still doing that, even though I'm back to closed development for now.But that was one of the reasons – if you try to “find the fun” in a void, you're going to get into trouble. In this game I’ve tried not to make things required. There's no progression path where you need to be violent. You can just chill and build. But if you go out into the world, these things unfold. They're not there to challenge you or to frustrate you. They're just there to bring the world to life.Why did you choose to launch a demo versus Early Access on Steam?I wanted user validation and user feedback. Early in my career, I did a lot of modding on Steam, back when it was mostly open development projects. You'd release something and people would request stuff or complain, and you'd implement their feedback and they'd be happy. It was super fun – a bit hardcore, but if you're into that kind of stuff, it's an interesting kind of punishment.If you go into Early Access and you're by yourself, people sometimes forget that you’re a solo dev. I make very polished stuff, but at the end of the day, it is just me. If I had my publisher respond to everybody, the community wouldn't like that – they want to speak to the developer, not a spokesperson. Early Access would create a lot of additional work for me. The program has gone from being about evolving the game to providing players with fully polished, fully playable content to enjoy. Early Access players are not beta testers. Nowadays, you need staff to run a proper Early Access. You need a roadmap, you need milestones, and when you hit those milestones, you need to let the community know. On top of that, you’re asking for money, so players have an opinion and they’re also your customer. And the customer is always right.That's why I made an evolving demo. It was available for eight months, non-stop, free-to-play. Players responded well, and I’m listening to their feedback. Running a demo can be kind of a brutal way to validate, but I don't think it’s possible to do this and not walk away with a substantially better game.You’re adding controller support. Has that been difficult for a grand strategy game? People typically go with mouse and keyboard for this genre.Here’s an interesting tidbit: When I make games, I always start with gamepad controls and work in reverse. When you pick up a controller to play Bulwark, it immediately feels very intuitive.From a game design perspective, I like to start with gamepad controls because I feel like it lets you focus on how you are controlling the world rather than “controlling the controlling.”Interesting! What’s your preferred control method?Gamepad. What I love about controllers on a philosophical level is – and this goes back to the dreamy side of our brains – I don't need to look at the controller to play. I'm actually looking at the screen. Whenever I'm playing a game with mouse and keyboard, I'm looking at the cursor. I'm not looking into the world – I’m just controlling the world from a separate layer above it. Playing with a controller, I like that I don't need to do that.I won a Steam Deck from the CommUnity Choice Award, and I've been using it every day [since]. I found out that if you use a Steam Deck and you upload a new build to your development branch on Steam, it's on Steam Deck in seconds. On PC you have to restart your Steam for it to detect that an update has been made. So my Steam Deck is now the easiest development kit on Earth. I just press upload and I can play it, and I'm not messing up my computer that's set up to debug.How are you generating the environments for players to build on?There's actually no map generation in Bulwark. It's the same world as The Falconeer, so it's a 10x10 km open world. I threw a bunch of stuff in there and Unity can handle it. There is literally no streaming code, although I did use a lot of instancing – that’s the rocks and the ocean itself.At the moment I’m streaming in faction settlements – groups for players to fight against if they want to – and those are streamed in quite simply, not as a JSON files, but as a long string which the engine parses. There aren’t that many objects, so I can get away with it.I also don’t use any Prefabs. It gets too messy in my head. Instead there’s just a pooling of objects in the scene that I copy to build the walls and so on. Those build up the dynamic settlements, which get dispatched when you move away from them.What technical achievement – even if it’s a small one – are you most proud of?I made an interesting resource system for the game – well, it’s more of a logistics system. To build, you don’t need gold, you just need to connect one building to another. For example, you might have a windmill that supplies +4 wood, which means you can keep building wood up to four nodes of your tower network. Building houses and industry around your windmill improves the output of the windmill, because you need people to do the work, right? It’s an actual economy that iterates throughout your settlement. It’s also quite a pretty complicated bit of code. As someone who considers himself an artist, I’m like, “Ah, I made a nice recursive economy system.” I don’t know if that’s the right term, but I’m pretty proud of it!You did a case study with us not too long ago on using the Asset Store to make The Falconeer. Have you picked up any new assets for Bulwark?I picked up a nice new ambient occlusion package. I’m using Unity 2022 LTS, but I’m still using the built-in render pipeline, because I’ve spent a long time building out my own workflow and am used to my own tools. Because Unity’s post-processing is more supported for URP and HRDP, I needed an ambient occlusion solution to do some modern tricks. I ended up buying FSR 2 – Upscaling for Unity from Alterego Games – another Dutch developer – which works for both URP and built-in. It’s been amazing. It really excites me seeing Asset Store developers take this new stuff and make it accessible to developers like me.That’s great. Taking the time to add visual polish can really make the difference when getting your game noticed. What advice do you have for developers looking to find more players for their game?A lot of it's just luck. Making 20 small games might teach you the basics, but today’s market isn’t about small games anymore. Look at the Indie Arena Booth this year – they’re all highly ambitious, highly polished, beautiful, original games, all of which would have been considered “AAA” just a few years ago. And there are so many of them.Statistically, the most important thing you can do to get your game noticed is to hang in there. If you stop making games, you're never going to get noticed. It's a waiting game. Whoever has the most perseverance wins eventually. At some point you'll know more people. You'll get even better. You'll find out new tricks. You'll meet more journalists. The longer you stay in the game or in the work, the better you're going to get at it. So hang in there and don't give a damn. Just do it. Just hold on. It's a ride.This interview has been edited and condensed.Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles is available now on PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and digital storefronts. Wishlist the game and follow @falconeerdev for updates. Visit our Made With Unity hub for more stories spotlighting innovators in game development.

We’re excited to share a new integration with Hugging Face and some product updates for Unity Sentis, our neural engine for bringing AI models into Unity. With Sentis, we aim to make AI models more accessible to help you power in-game features like object recognition, smart NPCs, graphics optimizations, and more.However, given how many models are available, it’s often difficult to know which one fits your use case, ensure it’s reliable, and determine whether it works well with Unity. This is why we integrated with Hugging Face, the largest AI model hub in the world (470,000+ models as of this writing), to offer validated AI models for Unity Sentis that our team has tested to ensure they integrate seamlessly.If you’d like to start with Unity Sentis right away, check out our blog overview, documentation, or dive into the community.Going forward, we’ll continue collaborating with Hugging Face to provide high-quality, validated AI models for use with the Unity Engine. These models are optimized for easy implementation into Unity with the Sentis framework, tagged with “Unity Sentis” in the Hugging Face hub. We also share the corresponding ready-to-use C# file to perform inference in your game. The models are preconverted to the .sentis format to bypass the ONNX conversion step. Today, we’re offering 11 validated models that cover common use cases the community has asked for, like sentence similarity, speech to text, object detection, and more.In order to build an expansive free and open-source set of models across all use cases, we encourage you to post personal projects of interest to the Hugging Face Hub using the Unity Sentis tag.Please reach out on the discussions forum for help adding a model or to share the link to your Hugging Face uploads with the community.Hugging Face also works well with Unity, even if your use case is not conducive to running AI model inferences locally with Sentis. You can use the Hugging Face Unity API package to host your model on the Hugging Face Inference API, which is a free API for rapid prototyping, or you can use their Inference Endpoints, a paid API for production use.Unity Sentis entered open beta as a prerelease package in 2023, and the team has been working hard to bring some stability improvements for early this year. The most recent release is focused on addressing issues identified by our developer community. We really appreciate everyone’s continued feedback to improve the package.Unity Sentis will officially launch later this year as part of the Unity 6 release. Until then, Sentis will remain a prerelease package in Unity 2023 as we add consistent feature updates and fixes. There are also a number of exciting product updates planned.It can be challenging to implement and optimize your model without a good visualization. To this end, we plan to create an intuitive graph viewer for AI models that allows for native visualization directly inside the Unity Editor. In addition, this will give you the ability to dispatch model nodes (operations) to different compute types (CPU vs GPU). Yay, graph-based visual optimization!Performance is always a concern for game developers. Our plan is to integrate with hardware acceleration libraries and neural-specific chipsets, also known as neural processing units (NPUs), on platforms like Microsoft Direct ML, Apple Core ML/MPS Graph, Google NN API, and more to achieve faster inference on every device. What’s better, when inference is run on an NPU, it means the computation is offloaded from CPU/GPU to leave more budget for your game needs.While many AI models can run on-device with Sentis, there are some cases where having a cloud inference is preferred. For instance, the model may only be available through a hosted service, or you need to maintain server authority, or you require faster performance on low-end devices.These cases can be solved for if you want to use standard Unity web requests with your API, or, as previously mentioned if you are using Hugging Face infrastructure you can use the Hugging Face Unity API. In the future, we plan to work with Hugging Face further to align their Unity API with the Sentis API to keep the local and cloud inference inputs and outputs consistent so it’s easier to prototype between native and cloud compute without modifying your C# code.Unity Sentis is now available for free in open beta to all Unity developers operating on Unity 2021.3 or higher through the Package Manager. If you’re already working with Sentis and want to collaborate with our team, please fill out this form.

The last 4 years are widely regarded as the age of hyper-casual. In just a few short years, the genre went from being relatively unheard of to taking 40% of the total share of voice for games - its snackability, accessible gameplay, and innovative creative strategy fueling its success.This success also impacted other game genres, which looked to the mass appeal of hyper-casual games as a source of users and an opportunity for growth. Since 2017, mobile game installs saw a 20% YoY increase, driven by hyper-casual games boosting game installs overall. The resulting growth peaked in 2020, reaching over 5B installs in the US.Since then, the growth of hyper-casual games has stayed consistent. But other mobile game genres haven’t been so lucky, with a moderate decline in downloads and eCPMs over the past two years thanks to macroeconomic shifts.A changing marketToday, hyper-casual games still reach 1.7B installs per year and bring in $2-2.5B in annual revenue. But a decline in installs is starting to show. As downloads for other genres declined, demand from these genres declined too, leading to a current decline in hyper-casual growth.It’s also no longer as easy as it once was to monetize hyper-casual games - eCPMs and LTVs have started to decline due to new regulations, app store policies, and macroeconomic conditions.While the hyper-casual genre is still very much alive and kicking, these conditions have led to an organic pivot for some studios and publishers with a new genre of games emerging: hybrid-casual.What are hybrid-casual gamesHybrid-casual games take the mass appeal and accessible mechanics of hyper-casual games and combine them with deeper gameplay loops and balanced economies of casual games. Hybrid-casual gameplay is still simple, but the quantity and quality of content are optimized for longer playtimes, aiming to keep players playing up to D60 and beyond. The result is a genre that remains accessible and marketable to the majority of players while having deeper content to motivate players towards rewarded ad units, IAP, and longer playtimes to create greater LTV.Consequently, there is less of an emphasis on interstitial and banner ads compared to hyper-casual games. In general, hybrid games get 45% more rewarded video impressions and generate 20-50% of their revenue from IAP - significantly more than hyper-casual.Also important is the longer development time required to create hybrid-casual games, usually 9-12 months. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. With games taking longer to develop, the market is less prone to saturation and is more stable - as of now, there are only roughly 15 successful hybrid-casual games that have reached scale.What this means for everyone1. A more stable supply for advertisersDue to the small number of hybrid-casual games on the market, and the long development time needed to create new ones, advertisers can expect more stability from the hybrid-casual supply. In the past, hyper-casual games launched at a massive rate, so it was hard to predict which game your ads were running on and who was seeing them. But with a narrower supply of hybrid-casual games, advertisers are more likely to know where their ads are running and who is seeing them - allowing them to more reliably predict ROAS.2. Better quality users for advertisersThis shift to hybrid-casual presents major opportunities for advertisers to acquire high-quality users. This is because hybrid-casual players are usually of higher quality and are willing to play and pay more than the average hyper-casual player. After all, they’re looking for a deeper game experience. The stability of the hybrid-casual market plus these higher quality players means that advertisers can acquire the right users.3. New monetization opportunities for developersHyper-casual games primarily monetize with interstitial and banner ads, which enable explosive growth, but can feel invasive to some players and, with the current market conditions, might offer lower performance to advertisers.In contrast, hybrid-casual games have a bigger focus on rewarded videos, and as a consequence playables. Rewarded videos are premium placements for playables since they motivate users to stay and watch an ad, rewarding them for doing it. Playable ad units demand a longer time commitment from the player (interstitial ads are usually limited to roughly 15 seconds, and playable ad units are often 45 seconds or more), but their conversion and engagement rates are far higher than interstitial ads.Thanks to the longer playtime and deeper meta of hybrid-casual games, players are more motivated to engage with these ad formats, giving developers access to effective monetization opportunities.A new mobile game market with hybrid-casualThe impact of the growing adoption of hybrid-casual will mean a bigger emphasis on playables and rewarded videos for developers. This will mean a better supply for advertisers who stand a stronger chance of converting users with these ad formats. Plus, the greater data predictability from the longer shelf-life of hybrid-casual games will lead to better optimization for developers and advertisers - offering great new avenues to success for both.

Following months of collaboration with developers in our visionOS beta program, we’re excited to share that official support for visionOS is now available to all Unity Pro, Enterprise, and Industry subscribers. You can now leverage Unity’s familiar authoring workflows, robust XR tools, and cross-platform compatibility to create immersive spatial experiences for a whole new ecosystem on Apple Vision Pro. Official support channels and success plans are also available to help you get started.Thousands of developers around the world participated in our beta program, collaborating closely with our engineering teams and generously sharing knowledge to build a community primed for a new era of spatial computing. The program attracted a broad range of developers, many of whom are building spatial experiences for the first time.Unity’s support for visionOS enables you to create three main types of spatial experiences:Immersive mixed reality experiences that blend digital content with the real world and can run alongside other apps in the Shared Space, made possible by Unity’s newly developed PolySpatial technologyPorts of existing virtual reality games or new, fully immersive experiences that replace a player’s surroundings with another environmentContent that runs in a 2D window and can be resized and repositioned by the user in the Shared SpaceWe know you want to see some of these new experiences that will be possible on Apple Vision Pro. Let’s explore the innovative creations from developers who were part of Unity's visionOS beta program.For Light Brick Studio, the imaginative minds behind the atmospheric geometric puzzle game LEGO® Builder’s Journey, Unity’s support for visionOS opens up the opportunity to create spatial experiences that leverage the powerful features of Apple Vision Pro.“Making LEGO® Builder’s Journey for Apple Vision Pro has been an incredible experience, working with a completely new type of interaction and rendering paradigm,” says Mikkel Fredborg, technical lead on LEGO® Builder’s Journey. “Unity has been very supportive in bringing their well-known workflow to a completely new type of system. Thanks to the support for visionOS, we have been able to tap into many of the features that make Apple Vision Pro such a unique platform. You really have to try it to understand how it shifts everything.”We have made developing immersive apps for the Shared Space incredibly efficient with a new feature called Play to Device. Developers can now live-preview content on the visionOS simulator or on Apple Vision Pro without having to leave the Unity Editor.Unity’s visionOS support has also enabled developers to introduce fully immersive experiences to the platform, including TRIPP, an award-winning XR wellness platform recognized by Time Magazine as one of their Best Inventions of 2022.“Building our app upon the Unity platform gives us the foundation to scale our services across multiple platforms – from launching our new AI-powered features on mobile to delivering beautiful immersive wellness experiences on Apple Vision Pro,” explains Nanea Reeves, CEO of TRIPP. “The support we received from the Unity team always goes above and beyond.”In addition to rich VR features and familiar authoring workflows, developers building fully immersive VR experiences can access device-specific features like foveated rendering and MSAA, which help deliver stunning visual quality and performance.To bring iOS (or iOS-compatible) apps over to visionOS, our simple one-click solution helps you adapt existing content for the Shared Space as windowed applications.Unity’s official support for visionOS unlocks numerous support options for developers:Success Plans that provide technical counsel and best practices to streamline development and mitigate project riskConsulting Services that provide expert technical guidance and collaboration to help you resolve development challengesProfessional On-demand Training, which gives you skills and knowledge to rapidly onboard onto development with visionOS.You can also connect, share insights, and seek community support in Unity’s discussion space for visionOS development, or check out our roadmap for a glimpse into upcoming features.Developing spatial apps for Apple Vision Pro using Unity is a straightforward process:1. Download the latest version of Unity 2022 LTS from the Unity Hub, and ensure that the visionOS build target is installed. *Development for visionOS is only supported on Mac computers with Apple silicon. 2. Download the visionOS template, which includes preconfigured project settings and an in-Editor tutorial. 3. Explore the template scenes or samples included with the visionOS package.Check out the getting started guide and see Unity’s visionOS support in action with our latest walkthrough at Unite 2023. If you’re using Unity Personal, you can check out these features by getting started with a free 30-day Unity Pro trial (terms apply).

In this guest blog, StatusPRO walks through how they tackled developing NFL PRO ERA. When cofounders Troy Jones and Andrew “Hawk” Hawkins set out to deliver this VR football game, the first to be licensed by the NFL, they knew it was an ambitious task. With experienced professionals behind them, their team not only launched NFL PRO ERA in September 2022 but also delivered a multiplatform game available on Meta Quest, Sony PlayStation® (PS VR and PS VR2), and Steam. Now, they’ve gone farther, introducing new features such as head-to-head multiplayer and expanding to new platforms. StatusPRO’s Head of AI and Gameplay Derrick Levy lays out how they made it happen with help from Unity.To achieve our goals, we needed to assemble a team of skilled developers who were knowledgeable and passionate about football game development. And we did. With over 100 years of combined experience, the team knew what worked and what didn’t.As a small company with a big license, our team operates differently than larger studios. For example, we have just one technical artist and one technical animator, while a bigger company may have a team of 10–15 artists or multiple animators. Our team members wear multiple hats, with engineers needing to know a little bit about everything in order to contribute to any part of the game. This versatility helps us be more efficient and focused.In order to build the Coach Confidence system, we leaned heavily on the ability to extend the Editor. I created a set of tools that allowed design to create over 100 unique events that could be updated and tuned without additional engineering support. This flexibility allowed both design and engineering to continue to create new, engaging experiences without one team being blocked by another.We have multiple design principles at StatusPRO, but our core principles are:1. Quality over quantity2. Content and variety are key3. Give gamers a reason to come backIn building NFL PRO ERA for multiple platforms, we maintained focus on giving users an immersive football experience like no other and adjusting to different platforms as needed. Unity was especially helpful as a partner, offering platform-specific guidance and sharing experiences from other developers who faced similar issues. This helped us anticipate and address any challenges before they became major setbacks.Unity’s XR Plug-in Management system made it possible for us to support the Meta, Steam, PSVR, and PICO platforms easily and without the need to learn each platform's specific SDK.Using the OpenXR subsystem along with the new Input Action Assets made it easy to support not only these platforms but the multitude of headsets that are available for PC, without the need for managing any additional plug-ins. Setup takes minutes instead of days.During the development process of NFL PRO ERA, we faced numerous performance challenges. Prior to alpha, there were stability issues due to memory load times while running at 15 frames per second. Unity played a critical role in helping us overcome these obstacles through a four-day sit-down with a Unity engineer. We conducted a thorough performance analysis and investigation into the game’s performance issues, receiving valuable feedback and suggested actions to improve the performance.This collaboration also extended to error reporting and handling platform-specific code. Unity introduced us to Backtrace, a tool we now use for error reporting, and provided us with priority support for any issues we encountered during the development process.The cross-platform support offered also made it possible for us to write the majority of the game’s code in a platform-agnostic way. With 85% of the code shared across platforms, we were able to easily roll out our game on multiple platforms while still maintaining a high level of quality.If you’re building a multiplatform VR experience, take advantage of opportunities for support because it is almost guaranteed to significantly improve performance. There’s nothing more satisfying than meeting deadlines while also achieving a high level of quality.Take this season of football to the next level and experience NFL PRO ERA II on Quest, PlayStation, or Steam. Be sure to check out more Made with Unity stories straight from developers here.

Optimizing performance while maintaining scalability is vital for helping your game succeed across platforms. The Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) can be a game-changer, enabling you to deliver more complex and ambitious experiences to players on a wider array of devices. However, moving from an object-oriented to a data-oriented design approach can be an adjustment, even for seasoned programmers.To help you get started with data-oriented design in Unity, we’ve put together this reading list. From educational video tutorials to inspiring customer stories, these resources offer practical insights and guidance so you can hit the ground running with DOTS.Dive in with our comprehensive list of DOTS learning resources below.ECS samples: Get hands-on with our DOTS sample projects on GitHub covering Entities, Netcode, Physics, HDRP graphics, and URP graphics.Character controller samples: Use the ECS to configure common character movements like walking and jumping, as well as character collision.ECS Network Racing sample: This racing game sample showcases best practices for using Unity Netcode for Entities.Firefighters sample: Previously used for internal Unity training, this project will be the focus of the upcoming DOTS bootcamp. Take this GameObject-based project and unlock performance using DOTS components.Megacity Multiplayer: Available now, this third-person multiplayer action demo supports 64+ players. Learn more about building ambitious games using ECS for Unity and our Multiplayer solutions.Megacity Metro: Megacity Metro is a scalable, high-concurrency, cross-platform demo of our latest technology, including the Netcode for Entities package.Entities: This package provides a data-oriented implementation of the ECS architecture.Entities Graphics: This package contains systems and components for rendering ECS entities.Netcode for Entities: This package provides a server-authoritative framework with client prediction for use in multiplayer games.We recently launched our first comprehensive e-book guide to data-oriented design in Unity. Introduction to the Data-Oriented Technology Stack for advanced Unity developers can help you make an informed decision about whether implementing some or all of the DOTS packages and technologies is the right decision for your project.Understand the basics of the core DOTS components using the official Unity Documentation pages, including overviews of Entities, Unity Physics, and Netcode for Entities.DOTS best practices: This two-hour advanced course focuses on ECS. Learn how to improve runtime performance in code written using the DOTS packages.Physics for ECS: Understand how and when to use Havok Physics for Unity versus Unity Physics, our two Entities-based physics solutions.Basics of DOTS: Learn the fundamentals of DOTS, which lets you implement data-oriented design to create higher-performing applications. You’ll follow three sample scripts to help you get started with the Jobs System and Entities.Get acquainted with DOTS: Three tutorials for intermediate developers addressing common questions that you or your team may have in the primary stages of your DOTS learning.Data-oriented design bootcamp: Revisit the recordings from all four sessions of our recent community learning event.Unity Forums: Talk data-oriented design with other developers, and get your questions answered in our ECS for Unity subforums: Entity Component System, Graphics for ECS, Netcode For ECS, and Physics for ECS.Discord: Join the Official Unity Discord to chat in real-time with devs about ECS concepts, Burst, Jobs, Netcode for GameObjects, and more.Unity Twitch: Go under the hood of Made With Unity games. DOTS streams include Bare Butt Boxing, V Rising, Ship of Fools, Zenith: The Last City, and most recently, Cataclismo.Unity Insiders: Follow community creators like Turbo Makes Games, Code Monkey, and Taro Dev for educational content on data-oriented design.Diplomacy is Not an Option: Watch this Twitch stream to see how Door407 uses DOTS to power their game's massive battles with thousands of units.Zenith: The Last City: See how Ramen VR leveraged Entities to enable scale and avoid rate limits while building their ambitious VR MMO.V Rising: Discover how Stunlock Studios uses data-oriented technology to power a sprawling open world.Bare Butt Boxing: Learn how Tuatara Games built modular software architecture with DOTS for their early access multiplayer game.HEROish: In this GDC talk,Sunblink Entertainment’s Justin Larrabee discusses harnessing ECS to build a successful mobile adventure game.DOTS roundtable: Stunlock Studios’ Rasmus Höök and Sunblink Entertainment’s Justin Larrabee join Unity’s Andrew Parsons and Joe Valenzuela to share how they use Entities in Unity 2022 LTS.Curious about the future of DOTS now that we’ve released Entities 1.0? For more information, check out the DOTS development and next milestones thread on the Unity Forums.Make your ambitious game a reality with DOTS, which enables you to create scalable, high-performance games and unforgettable experiences. Get the latest features with Unity 2022 LTS and try out upcoming tech in Unity 6 Preview.

Congratulations to all the Unity nominees and winners at the 27th annual DICE Awards. Cocoon won Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game, and What the Car?was awarded Mobile Game of the Year. In total, there were over 20 games nominated that were created with Unity. This is incredibly impressive and a testament to the innovation and creativity within our developer community.Earlier this month, Apple launched the highly anticipated Apple Vision Pro. Some of the very first spatial computing experiences available for the device are made with Unity, including the critically acclaimed LEGO® Builder’s Journeyfrom Light Brick Studios and TRIPP,a VR meditation app recognized by Time Magazine as one of the best inventions of 2022. For those itching to kick off the new year with new games, check out Steam’s Top New Releases from December. It featured six games made with Unity: Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Arizona Sunshine 2, Against the Storm, Steamworld Build, and House Flipper 2. Alternatively, if you’re just looking to play a game that everyone else is playing, Rust, Lethal Company and Unturned continue to make their mark on Steam’s most-played games chart.*In video and streaming, we started the year off with an in-depth look at Cookie Cutter, a hand-drawn 2D Metroidvania. We spoke with the creators, Subcult Joint to hear how they used 2D animations, Sprite Sheets, lights and more to build this unique beat-em-up.For our next creator spotlight, we talked to the developers at Dumativa and Cellbit on their latest game, Enigma of Fear, and how they built this 3D pixel art horror game in Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline (URP).Finally, if you’re keen on keeping a pulse on some of the best and brightest up-and-coming developers, our education team spent nearly two hours playing through winning and nominated games from the Best Student Project category in our 15th Annual Unity Awards.There were also some great highlights from our Unity Insiders. Here’s a roundup of the top content from some of your favorite community voices:Dilmer: Speaking of Apple Vision Pro, Dilmer (@Dilmerv) gave his first impressions of the device from a developer’s perspective.Turbo Makes Games: Johnny from Turbo Makes Games (@TurboMakesGames) teams up with Dani Anderson, a software engineer at Unity, to do a DOTS-centric livestream series. You can catch the first episode here.SpeedTutor: For an in-depth overview of the new changes to the Input System, be sure to check out this tutorial form Speedtutors (@SpeedTutor). He starts by installing the system and showing you how to set up your first action map, then guides you through scripting a manager script and creating your own 3D and 2D character controllers, complete with practical examples.There are so many impressive shares on social media using the #MadeWithUnity hashtag. Below are some highlights.We’re all excited about the early access announcement from Southfield. The physics-based chaos looks incredibly fun, and we can’t wait to get our hands on it.Have you checked out Goblin Cleanup? It’s exactly what it sounds like, and it’s amazing.Keep adding the #MadeWithUnity hashtag to your posts to show what you’ve been up to and spread the project love.Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Ubisoft (January 18, 2024)Wild Legion, BluSped (January 1, 2024)Sovereign Syndicate, Crimson Herring Studios (January 15, 2024)New Cycle, Core Engage (January 18, 2024 – early access)Stargate: Timekeepers, Slitherine (January 23, 2024)Oblivion Override, Humble Mill (January 24, 2024 – early access)Speed Crew, Wild Fields Games (January 31, 2024)Airhead, Octato (February 12, 2024)Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior, Sand Door Studio (February 13, 2024)The Great Ocean, Actrio Studio (February 15, 2024 – early access)Sons Of The Forest, Endnight Games Ltd (February 22, 2024 – launched out of early access)Inkulinati, Yaza Games (February 22, 2024 – early access)The Inquisitor, The Dust S.A. (February 8, 2024)Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Funday Games (February 14, 2024 – early access)Helskate, Phantom Coast (February 15, 2024)Solium Infernum, League of Geeks (February 22, 2024)Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story, Lazy Bear Games (February 21, 2024)Do you see any on the list that have already become favorites or find that we’re missing a title? Share your thoughts in the forums.We post new game releases and milestone spotlights on the @UnityGames Twitter and @unitytechnologies Instagram. Be sure to give us a follow and support your fellow creators.If you’re creating with Unity and haven’t seen your projects in any of our monthly roundups, submit them for the chance to be featured.That’s a wrap for January and February. For more community news as it happens, follow us on social media: X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, or Twitch.*Ranking as of February 12, 2024 at 5:30 pm PT.

In December, we hosted a DOTS-focused creator roundtable with Stunlock Studios (V Rising) and Sunblink Entertainment (HEROish, Hello Kitty Island Adventure). We invited these early adopters to share their experiences using the Data-oriented Technology Stack (DOTS), show what features and capabilities data-oriented programming has unlocked for their games, and see how they’re leveraging the latest Entity Component System (ECS) tech in Unity 2022 LTS.The Q&A was on fire during the webinar, with many insightful questions from the audience – so many that we couldn’t get to them all live. To follow up, we asked Joe Valenzuela, director, software engineering at Unity, and Rasmus Höök, technical director at Stunlock Studios, to answer some of our favorite questions from the session. Check them out below, and catch the Maximize your game’s potential with data-oriented design webinar on demand here.“Is it better to start new projects with DOTS right away or with regular GameObjects and then optimize performance by moving to ECS (either pure or hybrid)?”JOE VALENZUELA: ECS, DOTS, and data-oriented design (DOD) isn’t just about better performance. It’s also about avoiding the complexity inherent when you model problems using object-oriented programming (OOP).Anyone intending to make a multiplayer game – particularly one with an authoritative server and client-side prediction – should seriously consider starting with DOTS. Netcode for Entities offers a really robust, powerful system that scales up and allows you to write straightforward gameplay code.If you’re not making a multiplayer game, or you are just prototyping and looking to try out new things quickly, you might want to consider leveraging MonoBehaviour/GameObjects.“Is it possible to create a game entirely on the DOTS system, or does DOTS only support the GameObject system?”JOE VALENZUELA: No, you’re probably going to need some GameObjects at some point. It’s something we’re working on.“What are disadvantages or use cases where a developer shouldn’t use DOTS?”JOE VALENZUELA: You’re probably asking the wrong person – I can’t think of a case where I’d prefer to use something other than DOTS in Unity! But if you twisted my arm, I guess I’ll say that traditional MonoBehaviour/GameObject-based projects really excel when you’re prototyping. When you’re expecting rapid changes, you don’t want to necessarily spend a lot of time making Bakers or designing your data. It’s an area we hope to streamline for DOTS in the future.“Rasmus, do you have any advice for ramping up engineers on data-oriented programming?”RASMUS HÖÖK: I think a good start is to just write as straightforward and simple code as you can to solve the actual problem you have. Kind of get into the mindset of a beginner programmer and write very result-oriented code, where the goal is to make the code do what you want it to. The initial goal should not be about writing reusable code, creating abstractions or whatever.In the context of getting started with ECS, don’t overthink or overengineer. Rather, use larger components and bigger systems at first instead of splitting them up in many smaller pieces. This will make your code easier to follow. Split up later when you have a reason to. We definitely made this error early on.I’d say a good opportunity to practice data-oriented programming is when you have something you need to optimize. Then you have an actual problem you can experiment with and measure your result. You will also see how important thinking about data is.“We hear a lot about DOTS being used to scale up and build more ambitious games, but are there benefits to scaling down? Like using DOTS in a small project to target lower-end systems?”JOE VALENZUELA: Efficient operation on low-power systems improves the quality of the simulation code they can run. It also reduces the battery requirements for battery-operated devices, leading to longer running time and overall system health.“When switching from SystemBase to ISystem, how do you deal with the calls to managed code?”JOE VALENZUELA: Technically, you don’t need to get rid of managed code to use ISystem – managed code can be called from ISystem. Its managed data can’t be stored in an ISystem directly – for this, I would use managed component data.However, if you’re asking, “How do I excise the calls to managed code from ISystem so I can use Burst and get the best performance out of my code?” the answer is… it depends.If you’re using .NET containers, you might find a suitable replacement in com.unity.collections. If you’re interfacing with a managed Unity API and there isn’t an unmanaged alternative, sometimes it helps to split the work into “fetch data” and “process” phases, the latter of which is where you do your ISystem-based processing.“I've read in documentation that ECS is not compatible with multiple scene architecture. So how should that approach be done using ECS?”JOE VALENZUELA: Nothing in ECS precludes additively loading multiple Unity scenes. However, those scenes will not contain any ECS data, only GameObjects with MonoBehaviours.You can author any number of subscenes, and each will bake the authoring GameObjects and MonoBehaviour data into compact entity and component data that can be loaded at runtime. Subscenes can be further split into sections and each section can be streamed in or out as needed.“How [much] does having hybrid monobehaviours/DOTS affect determinism in a project?”JOE VALENZUELA: Determinism is not a binary state, and we don’t guarantee that every execution detail is identical between runs. Generally, hybrid interoperability is sometimes needed for presentation details like particle systems or audio, where a perfect per-frame reproduction isn’t necessary.For features like predictive gameplay, you’ll want your simulation running in ECS.How do you manage hundreds of systems? Do they all run all the time and just not execute logic when there are no entities in the query? Or do you contextually activate systems based on game state?JOE VALENZUELA: For ease of development, we’ve made systems update by default. The difference in performance isn’t huge, but if you truly have hundreds of systems, you might benefit from making them latent update by calling RequireForUpdate or using the RequireMatchingQueriesForUpdate attribute.The idiom in that case is to add a RequireForUpdate() to the relevant system, and use Foo IComponentData in your scenes as a sort of flag to turn on the update of those systems.“I understand that DOTS improves performance in terms of handling large amounts of data during runtime, during gameplay (rendering especially, from what I’ve heard). However, I’ve also heard DOTS improves production performance in terms of easing any refactoring needed. Could you speak a little on how DOTS helps refactoring?”JOE VALENZUELA: A big appeal of DOTS, ECS, and DoD in general from my perspective is that it makes more of your simulation state visible and inspectable. If you’ve ever tried to add tests for an OOP library, you may have run into the problem where you end up having to mock or instantiate a huge amount of functionality in order to replicate the state necessary to invoke a “simple” method instance. With DoD style systems, you can almost always represent a transformation kernel as a standalone function that turns one value type into another.This is hugely easier to reason about, to test, and to parallelize.“In my (amateur) experience, I find that DoD creates tight coupling between the data and the architecture, causing changes to data structures to introduce large refactoring work. Is this your experience? How did you handle or avoid this problem?”RASMUS HÖÖK: In our experience, when changing the data we usually have to alter the code that’s using it, even before using ECS. So we haven’t suffered more than what we’re used to!JOE VALENZUELA: I don’t think this is a fundamental problem of DoD or even our ECS, at least as it’s evolved over time.For one thing, the traditional method of breaking tight coupling in OOP is typically to make instance-oriented functions and class hierarchies. While that’s nice in theory, that kind of abstraction is one of the first things to go in performance programming.There’s nothing preventing you from writing utility functions in an ECS. While it’s true in our ECS you have to revisit systems when you change the data contract for specific queries, that can be a sign that you’re querying data in a scattered fashion. Are you repeatedly transforming component data? Can that be rewritten to reduce the number of mutations per frame? Repeatedly reading component data? Maybe you can hoist it into an immutable data structure early in the frame.Lastly, I think it’s safe to say DoD, or at least ECS, does make a lot more of the problem state explicit. That’s not a negative: That’s a different tradeoff. I much prefer reasoning about a tight coupling while refactoring than a loose or implied one.“Does the ECS/OOP work well for mobile games, or can you recommend this approach for a mobile game project? Any risks or considerations?”JOE VALENZUELA: We’ve had multiple customers successfully use ECS in their mobile games. Check out this GDC talk to see how Sunblink Entertainment used it for HEROish.“How did you go about networking V Rising? Did you use Netcode for Entities or another framework?”RASMUS HÖÖK: We made our own framework. We started using DOTS for production very early and were aware of the risks of doing that. To eliminate as many risks as we could, we tried to rely on as few packages as possible and rolled our own when possible. We have always made multiplayer games and have always used our own solutions, so we were comfortable with doing it ourselves.“Is ECS stable enough for production? We’ve been struggling with it for the past few months with a prototype and aren’t sure if those were growing pains as we learn or if it isn’t quite ready to strive for a pure ECS production project.”RASMUS HÖÖK: I’d say it’s stable enough for production but it is lacking features that many game developers might take for granted. Our gameplay code is pure ECS in V Rising, but presentation stuff, such as animated characters, particle effects, and UI, are all using GameObjects. Realistically, I think a hybrid approach is the best way for most teams starting a project today.We made V Rising using a one-way approach. We use pure ECS to only push data to GameObjects, never the other way around. For example, we keep the state of a character in ECS data – input, velocity, etc., that will decide the locomotion state, and what animation should be active and at what time and speed. Then we make sure the animator of the GameObject is in that state. Whatever state the animator is in never affects the gameplay. I think this separation overall simplifies the game.JOE VALENZUELA: ECS is production-ready and used by customers worldwide, but we have a long way to go until the experience is as seamless as we’d like. Stay tuned for future developments – and thanks for using DOTS!Make your ambitious game a reality with DOTS, which enables you to create scalable, high-performance games and unforgettable experiences. Get the latest features with Unity 2022 LTS and try out the latest tech in Unity 6 Preview.

At Unite 2023, we introduced the world to Unity Muse, a suite of capabilities to help you explore, ideate, and iterate with greater ease in the Unity Editor. One of these capabilities is Texture. Muse’s texture capability transforms natural language and visual inputs into PBR-enabled materials that can be applied directly to surfaces and objects in your project.In our blog “Responsible AI and enhanced model training at Unity,” we shared how Muse’s foundational model for textures, Photo-Real-Unity-Texture-1,was responsibly built and trained so that outputs are safe to use and respectful of others’ copyrights. Specifically, we detailed how we pioneered a bespoke diffusion model trained from scratch on proprietary data that is Unity-owned or licensed.We remain committed to responsibly building AI in service of our creators and today, so we are launching the next generation of this model, Photo-Real-Unity-Texture-2.In the latest version of our model, we focused on improving material types that commonly occur in games. Materials such as wood, bricks, concrete, leather, metals, gravel, soil, and many others have all had significant improvements. Prompt-based color consistency has also improved, and an upcoming release of the Muse Texture package will include the ability to choose both a specific color and specific pattern at the same time.In addition, our model has significant improvements related to the creation of heightmaps. Heightmaps are now 16 bit by default, and the model is much more capable of producing believable maps for abstract concepts in many cases.Photo-Real-Unity-Texture-2 has been implemented into Unity Muse, so all Muse users can take advantage of these improved textures today.These side-by-side comparisons show the difference in quality between Photo-Real-Unity-Texture 1 and Photo-Real-Unity Texture 2.The images on the left are from our previous model, and images on the right are from our new one.Depth is a critical aspect of achieving high-quality interaction with light. The side-by-side comparisons show the difference in quality of the height maps and normals between Photo-Real-Unity-Texture-1 versus Photo-Real-Unity-Texture-2.The images on the left are from our previous model, while images on the right are from our new model.We will continue improving Muse Texture’s output quality in the most responsible way possible. Other areas for improvement in our current roadmap include Editor integration, artistic control, and better tools for education and onboarding.Editor integrationYou’ve told us that deeply integrating Muse Texture into your Editor workflow is paramount to your success. We will continue doing so and aim to create as seamless an experience as possible with new features such as quick in-scene variation, and by making it easier to bring our material maps into other shaders.Artistic controlThe models will continue improving, but we learned that many of you want and need more artistic control to achieve your desired results. Additional features that improve artistic control will enable you to achieve your vision more quickly and easily. We plan to further improve color control and consistency, add the ability to convert photos or reference images to materials, and allow you to control texture stylization using reference assets.Education and onboardingGenerative AI is a new technology. We will focus on better onboarding and learning materials to help you leverage the tool’s features for deep artistic control. We will focus on shortening your journey to help you find success as quickly as possible.Try Unity Muse free for your first 15 days to experience how AI capabilities allow you to prototype faster in the Unity Editor. If you have questions, check out our AI FAQ, or visit our dedicated Unity Muse Discussions to chat with us directly.

In 2023, a shifting global economy impacted financial landscapes across sectors, and the mobile gaming industry was no exception. Mobile gaming still saw YoY growth of 0.6%, but consumer spending on in-app purchases lagged and total downloads dipped slightly, according to data.ai. At the same time, demand for games hit an all-time high, indicating that those who are downloading and engaging with mobile games are doing so often and with great enthusiasm.As mobile games continue to evolve in the year ahead, the industry is positioned for another demanding and eventful year in 2024. From new ways to maximize monetization in the current economic climate to optimizing in-game ads and focusing on new genres, here are some of the top gaming industry trends to keep in mind as you continue to build your 2024 strategy. 1. Tech’s starring roleMaytal Shaul, VP Strategic Operations & GTM at Unity Tech will continue to take center stage as more developers and publishers use software to move to in-app bidding, test for game marketability before publishing, and run campaigns through CTV. Additionally, developers will scale up their use of AI to help improve their creativity, from ideation to design.On the business side, AI will become a communication tool to help smaller or indie game developers track their business and provide tech support. At Unity, we’re already using a chatbot to provide developers with additional support on a range of topics, like integrating SDK.2. Optimizing the ad experienceAnna Popereko, Senior Game Design Consultant at Unity This year, developers will place a greater emphasis on improving user experience (UX) when it comes to their ad monetization strategy. More developers will increasingly look at the quality and composition of in-game ads to strike a better balance between ad performance and a positive user experience.This means rethinking the timing and frequency of interstitials, and the placements of rewarded videos to resolve user frustration. Google’s interstitial ad guidelines will also help shift the tides, encouraging more developers to refine their ad experience. As part of this pivot, more developers will embrace a data-centric approach to ad quality in order to achieve a better balance of performance with churn. Developers will also lean more heavily on what the data says about the quality of their ads, both in the composition of ad formats and in the content. This is possible with tools like Ad Quality by Unity. 3. Hyper-casual games will evolve and more games will go hybridNadav Ashkenazi, SVP and Chief Revenue Officer for Unity Grow While gaming trends indicate hyper-casual games are still going strong, it’s getting harder to launch a hyper-casual hit that’s successful over the long run. In order to reach the chart-topping success that Going Balls and Bridge Race achieved, developers will need to work on the evolution of their gameplay, adding more depth and progression to ensure optimization. Among gaming trends in 2023, we also saw larger hyper-casual developers launch new hybrid-casual games. With an eye toward the future, the entire mobile gaming market is taking it all in and doubling down their hybridization efforts. In 2024, many more hyper-casual developers will look at ways to hybridize their existing hyper-casual game as a way to increase retention of quality users. This means adding richer gameplay and a deeper economy that includes more casual monetization techniques with a wider variety of ad formats like IAPs.4. Puzzles for the winYuval Lotan, Director, Head of Growth, LevelPlay at Unity There’s no doubt that 2023 was a very strong year for the puzzle game sub-genre. Known for their solid retention rates that lead to the generation of high ad revenue, 2024 is set to be another profitable year for puzzle games, as more developers and advertisers will increasingly focus their monetization and UA strategies on this genre. 5. Letting go of the myth that ads will cannibalize IAPsEyal Hendelman, Senior Director, Head of Offerwall at Unity To find success in today’s market, more game developers will soon start to step outside of their comfort zone and test new ways to optimize their growth. Another top gaming trend this year will involve more developers embracing user-initiated ad formats to monetize non-paying users.As developers start implementing user-initiated ad formats like Offerwall, they’ll find that they are not only a great way to monetize non-paying users, but they can also lead to an increase in IAP and turn more players into payers. In fact, implementing offerwall into games is a great way to increase retention and user engagement, while complimenting your IAP.6. A market rebound on the horizonAmir Shaked, VP, Revenue, Ads at Unity Along with the economic slowdown in 2023, the gaming industry has also experienced a noticeable drop in both acquisitions and IPOs. Despite this decrease, the future of mobile gaming appears much more promising as we head into 2024. Looking ahead to H2, it’s becoming clear that the stage is now set for considerable growth. We are hopeful that this period will mark the beginning of an industry-wide resurgence that will continue into 2025, characterized by the launch of new studios, and a significant uptick in UA investment.Hungry for more insights into the mobile game industry? Tune into our podcast, or check out our Medium featuring top-tier experts from the industry.

Unity is excited to announce Daily Rewards - a new and unique offering for advertisers on its Offerwall product, Tapjoy from Unity.Offerwall, a rewarded marketplace, is widely used by advertisers looking for a user acquisition channel with strong ROAS performance that drives high quality, loyal users. Daily Rewards, the newly-launched campaign type, gives users rewards for every task they complete in an app, such as finishing a level or winning a battle, encouraging users to return to the app each day to earn more rewards as they progress further in the game.The daily nature of the rewards is a good fit for audiences that prefer short challenges with fast and frequent rewards. It maintains the precision of an event-based optimization model, promoting user engagement, supporting player loyalty, and driving long-term value for the advertiser.Summary of Daily Rewards benefits for mobile game advertisers:- Increases conversion rates by offering shorter, quicker and more frequent rewards, well suited to the preferences of players across a wide range of game genres. - Drives higher ROAS by capping the number of Daily Rewards that a player can receive, thereby incentivizing players to return daily to the Offerwall and spend more time in the advertiser’s game.- Allows for easy bid management - advertisers simply set a maximum bid to be paid if a user completes the final event in the funnel.Daily Rewards also benefits the app publishers that monetize with the Offerwall, by engaging a new segment of players who respond better to more frequent, daily rewards. Apps utilizing Daily Rewards in beta have, on average, shown a 6% increase in unique daily users converting on an offer.

Shader Graph Technical Overview with @BenCloward

Unity is delighted to announce that Unity Ads and ironSource Ads will soon start their alpha as real-time SDK bidders on the AdMob mediation platform and Google Ad Manager (GAM) platform, helping app publishers maximize their revenue opportunities.In-app bidding increases buyer access to the mobile app inventory, helping developers maximize their revenue opportunities within the bidding networks. AdMob and Google Ad Manager’s access to Unity Ads and ironSource Ads bidders creates an opportunity for their publishers and developers to get the highest bids possible for their inventory, while empowering the networks' advertisers with access to premium ad inventory and strong opportunities for scale and growth.App publishers using AdMob mediation and the Google Ad Manager platform will benefit from access to the Unity Ads and ironSource Ads bidders. In addition, AdMob and Google Ad Manager publishers will be able to seamlessly add Unity Ads and ironSource Ads networks to their monetization stacks without creating new waterfall instances, improving operational efficiency.“We have long collaborated with Unity, and are excited to take the next step in this journey by making demand from Unity and ironSource’s ad networks available to our AdMob and Google Ad Manager publishers,” said Ali Pasha, Director of Product Management for Apps Monetization at Google. “This SDK integration will especially benefit our gaming app publishers, bringing additional value and access to high-quality advertisers.”“We’re excited to be working with Google to help more publishers maximize their apps’ revenue through the strength of our bidding networks,” explains Nadav Ashkenazy, SVP and CRO, Unity Grow. “This partnership helps more developers and publishers take advantage of high quality demand from two of the industry’s strongest networks.”There will be further announcements from Unity once the bidders are available in beta.

As you grow your app, scaling your user base is essential. Traditional CPI advertising ensures you can grow your installs, but what if you could acquire higher quality users who don’t just download your app, but also take action in your app, like making an in-app purchase? That’s where ironSource Ads’ tCPA (target cost per action) optimizer comes in.With the tCPA optimizer, advertisers can automatically acquire users that are likely to complete a specific in-app event, or action. By reaching high-quality users who are likely to achieve key milestones in your app, you can save yourself time and operational overhead. And by reaching more engaged users, you can even boost your LTV in the process. Let’s break down how to make the most of the tCPA optimizer, from choosing the right actions to adjusting your goal.Choose meaningful actionsWith the tCPA optimizer, you get to ask yourself: “Who are the high-value users I'm interested in reaching?” The answer will vary for each advertiser and app - but you get to choose the action that fits best. For example, if you have a subscription-based app, you might choose signing up for a free trial as the required user action.To make efficient use of your campaign spend, it’s important to choose an action that is often achieved by high quality users. That’s why the growth experts at ironSource Ads recommend aiming for an action that your top 5 - 20% of users (with the highest LTV) complete within 7 days.For example, if many players in your game sign up for a free trial, that shouldn’t be the action you choose to optimize towards, since it’s not unique enough to indicate high engagement. Instead, choose an action deeper in the game, like upgrading to a paid subscription - which is far more likely to indicate a high quality user.Set targeted goalsJust like you need to set an action in your app for users to complete, you also need to set a tCPA goal. Essentially, you need to set the average amount you’re willing to spend for these high-quality users. It’s important to choose a goal that is realistic - a goal that’s too high might cause you to overpay, but a goal that’s too low won’t allow you to scale.The simplest way to determine your goal is by calculating how much you pay per action, or eCPA (effective cost per action). To calculate your eCPA, just divide spend by the number of users who have completed your desired action.So, if your action is paying for a subscription, first choose a cohort of users and calculate their total spend - then divide it by the number of users from that cohort who paid for a subscription. Now you’ve got your eCPA. This value should be your minimum goal. In fact, with the tCPA optimizer, you don’t need to calculate this yourself - the tCPA dashboard will calculate your ideal goal for you.Give your optimizer time to learnNow it’s time to turn on the tCPA optimizer. In order to accurately measure your eCPA, it’s important to give your optimizer enough time to learn and analyze your data, and adjust your goal accordingly. With the tCPA optimizer, that means waiting a full 7 days after turning on the optimizer. If you only give the optimizer a day or two to adjust, then your data won’t accurately reflect your eCPA, making it harder to optimize and scale up down the line.Manually adjust your goal (if needed)So, you’ve given your optimizer enough time to measure your data - now it’s time to observe your results. But what if your eCPA performance is too high? This likely means the goal you set was likely too low.Why? The higher the goal you set, the higher the optimizer bids - so if you’re not enabling the optimizer to bid high enough, you won’t get enough users. And this means you’re likely spending too much for the few users you do reach.So, to lower your eCPA, you should consult with your account manager and gradually start to raise your goal. By increasing your goal, you’ll be able to reach higher quality users - so you can get more user actions from the same spend. Not to mention, increasing the amount of quality actions can lead to higher ROAS and retention.For example, one of our clients had a higher eCPA than their tCPA goal - so with the growth strategy team’s help, they raised their goal on the 27th. As a result, their eCPA naturally lowered, dropping right below their goal - so they found the sweet spot that allowed them to optimize their growth.Ultimately, UA optimization is all about maximizing the number of high quality users you can reach, while minimizing the amount you need to spend to reach them. By using the tCPA optimizer to set the right action and goal, you can ensure you’re setting up your UA strategy for maximum success.To get started using the tCPA optimizer, just reach out to your account manager. Learn more about how the Unity team can help you optimize your UA strategy here.

The Shader Graph team is excited to announce the release of our newest set of samples, available to import now in 2022 LTS and Unity 6 Preview (2023.3).With this sample set, our goal is to provide examples of how to achieve a wide range of effects and techniques using Shader Graph. If there’s an effect you want to add to a shader, it’s often available online in the form of a math equation or code – both of which may be out of reach for some. We want to make it easier for you to achieve the effects you’re looking for.Shader features such as parallax mapping, interior cube mapping, angle blending, flow mapping, and custom lighting are just five of the over 30 different feature examples available in this set. While these examples don’t provide complete shader solutions, they do show you how to create specific effects, and most are neatly encapsulated in subgraphs, so they’re easy to drag and drop into your own shaders.Here’s a full list of the sample categories.Blending Masks: This set of blending mask subgraphs includes altitude blending, angle blending, camera distance blending, and height blending.Conditional Branching: Find two examples of how to branch your shader, depending on which render pipeline you’re using and the quality level you select.Custom Interpolator: This offers an illustration of how to improve performance by moving operations to the vertex stage, including an illustration of some effects that don’t work very well when computed per-vertex.Custom Lighting: Many of you have asked for a way to customize how lighting works in Shader Graph, either to make lighting cheaper to render or to achieve a unique artistic style for a project. These samples show how that can be done and include an example of PBR lighting, simple lighting, and a cel shader.Detail Mapping: This set includes three different techniques for applying more detail to a material using detail mapping: color detail, normal detail, and full material detail.Procedural Noise and Shapes: It’s often more cost effective to generate patterns procedurally rather than using texture maps. This category contains an example of how to generate a brick pattern procedurally, a subgraph for generating a hexagon grid, and a set of signed distance field shapes.Shader Graph Feature Examples: Shader Graph has several features that can be tricky to master, such as subgraph dropdowns and branching based on input connection. This section contains examples of how you can use these features to improve subgraphs’ usefulness.UV Projection: A large set of features are based on the manipulation of UV coordinates, including flipbook blending, flow mapping, interior cube mapping, latitude longitude projection, matcap or sphere projection, parallax mapping, and triplanar projection. This section includes all of these effects.Vertex Animation: When most people think of Shader Graph, they think of pixel shaders, but Shader Graph can also animate vertices using the vertex stage. These examples include a waving flag, a bend deformer, a camera-facing billboard effect, Gerstner waves, and a full-featured particle system built entirely in Shader Graph.Install the new sample assets using the Package Manager.In the Editor, open Package Manager.2. In the Package Manager window, select the Shader Graph package.3. Select the Samples tab.4. Finally, click the Import button in the Feature Examples section to bring the new sample set into your project.With these steps completed, the Feature Examples assets will show up in your project under Assets/Samples/Shader Graph//Feature Examples.After importing the samples, get started by opening the scene that corresponds to the render pipeline you’re using (High Definition Render Pipeline, or HDRP, Universal Render Pipeline, or URP, or the Built-in Render Pipeline) in the Scenes folder.Once the scene is open, select the Shader Graph Feature Samples Showcase asset in the Hierarchy panel, then follow the guided tour in the Inspector.You can use the Samples dropdown box to select a sample and jump to that location in the scene.We’re continuing to add more samples to Shader Graph, and we have several more sample packs in the coming months. These will help you learn Shader Graph more quickly, understand how to set up specific functionality, and create new shaders faster with premade subgraphs and templates. We hope you’ll enjoy using them.Shader Graph basicsShader Graph documentationUnity Learn tutorialsThis is a very deep and rich sample set. We hope you have fun exploring it and use it to speed up your own shader creation process.We’d love to hear your thoughts and impressions on these samples – tell us what you think in the Shader Graph forum.

Unity is excited to announce its expansion in the European (EMEA) market for its Programmatic Exchange, following four years of exponential growth for direct brand and agency sales in North America .Growing Opportunities for European AdvertisersMany of the largest brands in Europe are already utilizing supply from both the Unity and ironSource Exchanges on the open market, indicating the significant value the supply holds for European advertisers. In fact, Unity has established preferred supply partner relationships with major agency holding companies, laying a solid foundation for its expansion into Europe. By establishing direct relationships, Unity can now better support global brands' marketing efforts and drive mutual success in the EMEA market.In addition to existing partnerships and supply relationships, Unity is excited to introduce our programmatic solutions and support to EMEA brands and agencies. Leading the charge for our work in sales in the EMEA market will be Katya Kornilova. With her proven track record in the mobile gaming and programmatic industry, Kornilova will spearhead the initiative to establish and nurture direct relationships with brands and agencies across the European market, further solidifying Unity's commitment to delivering unparalleled support and innovation.Commitment to Programmatic ExcellenceAs part of our expansion strategy, select demand partners connected with the ironSource and Unity Exchanges can now receive consent signals, per IAB's Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) 2.2. By supporting the transmission of TCF consent signals, Unity reaffirms its dedication to supporting demand partners in their efforts to comply with data protection regulations for a more ethical, sustainable advertising ecosystem.Unity's expansion into the EMEA market signifies more than just a geographical growth; it represents a commitment to redefining the future of mobile gaming and programmatic advertising in Europe. By leveraging its success in North America and combining it with strategic partnerships and industry expertise, Unity is poised to lead the way in delivering innovative solutions, exceptional service, and measurable results to brands and agencies across Europe.For any inquiries or further information about our expansion into Europe, please contact Katya Kornilova.

At this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC), we went deeper into the tech and tools. Read up on industry trends, get a look at the roadmap featuring Unity 6, download a new multiplayer sample, experiment with Unity Muse’s latest AI capabilities, and join in celebration of games that are made with Unity.Starting off the week, we released the 2024 Unity Gaming Report, which can help you understand the forces that are shaping today’s industry. The report draws insight from approximately five million Unity Engine developers, an astonishing 342 billion ad views, and this data is complemented by commentary from 19 studios from across the globe, who share their own insight and experiences. The stories, data, and five trends are compiled to help inform your own game development journey and better understand where the year is going, now and in the years ahead. Check it out.Looking toward the future, we dedicated a session to the roadmap for not only Unity 6, but all of the complementary products and services to help you create and run your game. The roadmap covers topics including all-new graphics features for creating immersive worlds, innovation in XR (also tackled in our in-demand Apple Vision Pro deep dive session that’ll be uploaded soon), and how Unity Cloud and Unity Muse can help you leverage to boost efficiency. We also address what’s new in multiplayer, both in-Editor and for operation using Game Server Hosting and Vivox Voice and Text Chat. Watch the session below to see what’s new and how Unity is taking your feedback to invest in the future.We just released Megacity Metro, a new sample that showcases multiplayer game development across platforms and supports over 100 players. Built using DOTS and the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) for cross-platform compatibility, it comes pre-integrated with Unity Cloud services like Authentication, Multiplay Hosting, Matchmaker, and Vivox Voice Chat. Think of the sample as a blueprint if you want to better understand multiplayer game mechanics or incorporate the latest technologies into your game.You can download the Megacity Metro sample today, then join us on Wednesday, March 27 for a webinar where we’ll go behind-the-scenes into the tech, discuss how the sample was set up, and give you a look at the breadth of our multiplayer solutions.By adding Unity Cloud to all Unity subscription plans, we’re helping to make working as a team more efficient. Unity Cloud centralizes content and streamlines team workflows with vital connections between Unity Asset Manager, Unity Version Control, and the Editor. You can get started for free, and Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise plans get increased cloud storage and team administration capabilities.Muse helps you ideate and iterate faster by harnessing the power of AI to complement your creativity. This week, we revealed that we’ll soon be incorporating all of Muse’s capabilities into the Editor, bringing AI closer to where you create to streamline your workflows.We also previewed an improvement to Muse texture generation, Texture 3D. This new model leverages new original research and proprietary models to generate true PBR materials for 3D objects. This means that you’ll be able to produce a multi-material UV texture that can wrap onto an object directly and will react more accurately to lighting.You can get started with a free trial of Muse to begin experimenting and see how AI can help you create more efficiently.For mobile game studios, Tapjoy recently introduced Daily Rewards, a unique new campaign type on Offerwall that can help advertisers to drive higher ROAS. Daily Rewards offers players daily incentives by inviting them to come back to unlock in-game rewards every day.In the ads space, the Unity Ads Network and ironSource Ads will soon be available in beta on the Google AdMob mediation platform as real-time bidders. Stay tuned for more on the release.GDC wouldn’t be complete without the latest games, and we celebrated alongside a few studios at our Creator Lounge. Tomas Sala’s Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles is an open-world combat builder that showcases the flexibility of Unity’s extensibility. Southfield, by Radical Forge, combines farming with ridiculous physics in an online multiplayer experience across platforms, leveraging everything from netcode to matchmaker to Multiplay game server hosting. Super Gear Games soft-launched Racing Kingdom to both iOS and Android, powered by URP to ensure peak performance across devices.VR is having a resurgence this year, and we featured Nosebleed Interactive’s Arcade Paradise VR, an immersive arcade experience built with URP along with the 2D toolset used to make the arcade games. Demeo Battles, by Resolution Games, brings its turn-based strategy game to VR with help from the Input System to allow for cross-play with PC. Resolution Games also announced a brand-new mixed reality mode for Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs.Finally, awards were handed out at the Game Developers Choice Awards – a special shout out to Visai Games’s Venba for taking home the Best Debut and Social Impact awards. Congratulations!As we close out GDC, we want to thank everyone who took time to connect with us live and in person. You chatted with us and played games at the Creator Lounge, provided insightful feedback at our product roundtables, and inspired us with your games and technology curiosity. We hope you enjoyed reconnecting as much as we did, and we can’t wait to see you at the next GDC. In the meantime, keep creating amazing games.Stay tuned as we share all of our GDC Dev Summit content online and on-demand, and feel free to explore how Unity can help you create, run, and grow your games.

The 2024 Unity Gaming Report reveals that studios are building more multiplayer games despite the complexity. While bringing more players into game development poses challenges, it’s never been simpler to build multiplayer games with Unity. Browse this curated list of resources to get familiar with the latest multiplayer demos, samples, and templates.Our high-level networking library, NetCode for GameObjects (NGO), simplifies developing multiplayer games by abstracting networking logic. It enables you to manage and transmitGameObjects and world data efficiently across networking sessions to multiple players. If you’re just getting started with multiplayer development, NGO serves as an excellent starting point.“Hello World” project: This beginner-friendly tutorial guides you through setting up a project with NGO to lay the groundwork for your first networked game.2D space shooter: Delve into physics, movement, and status effects using Netcode, NetworkVariables, and ObjectPooling with this engaging code sample.Invaders: Gain insights into game flow, unique movement mechanics, networked shared timers, and more.Client-driven sample: Explore client-driven movements, networked physics, object spawning, and reparenting.Dynamic Addressables network Prefabs sample: Learn to dynamically add new spawnable prefabs at runtime with this advanced code sample.Finally, the Unity Gaming Services (UGS) team recently updated their documentation for NGO and multiplayer services. You can also stop by the multiplayer forum if you have questions or need help.Ready to tackle more complex multiplayer projects? These advanced demos and samples introduce sophisticated multiplayer concepts, integrating services like Lobby, Vivox, Relay, Multiplay Hosting, and DOTS/ECS.Small-scale competitive multiplayer template: This is your starting point to create and ship a multiplayer project using Netcode For GameObjects and UGS. The template includes a Bootstrapper tool that helps you test faster using various network modes (Host, Client, Server) and dynamic configurations, in-Editor tutorials, and a bare-bones, event-driven gameplay flow.Game lobby sample: Learn how to use the Lobby and Relay packages from UGS to create a typical game lobby experience. Connecting to the lobby will also enable Vivox Voice Chat as long as an audio input device is available.Serverless multiplayer game sample:This sample showcases how to join or create a Lobby Service game lobby and compete in a simple coin-collecting arena game.Boss Room: This fully functional co-op multiplayer RPG made with Unity Netcode is an educational sample designed to showcase typical netcode patterns often featured in similar multiplayer games. Prefer to follow along with a video? Check out this webinar series.Galactic Kittens: This 2D co-op space adventure sample game helps you learn how to apply and synchronize sprite animations, particle effects, and basic 2D movement.Battle Royale with Photon Fusion: We teamed up with Photon to launch a new asset to help you produce peak performance on Unity’s Game Server Hosting (Multiplay) orchestration platform and Matchmaker.Megacity Metro: Our most robust multiplayer demo to date, Megacity Metro supports 128+ players and uses the latest multiplayer tech, including Unity Gaming Services and DOTS/ECS.There are so many videos out there built by our community of developers and content creators, but here are a few of our favorites.Tarodev’s “How to: Unity Online Multiplayer”:Tarodev has graced us with a wonderful intro to NGO that takes you from installation to interpolation, all the way through to server authority.Code Monkey’s “Learn Multiplayer Free”:Our pal Code Monkey has an excellent guide on how to build a multiplayer game in Unity using NGO and the rest of UGS.Turbo’s “Netcode for Entities”course:We couldn’t leave Turbo out of the mix. This course guides you through how to build a multiplayer MOBA-style competitive game.If you’re an experienced multiplayer developer and you’ve got a big idea that requires a high degree of performance and determinism, DOTS and ECS might be the right base for your game.Moving from an object-oriented to a data-oriented design approach can be an adjustment, even for seasoned programmers. We’ve put together this reading list to help you get started with data-oriented design in Unity.This year at GDC, we showcased our multiplayer roadmap for Unity 6. We’re working hard to bring you Multiplayer Play Mode, distributed authority, a simpler Multiplayer Services SDK, and more. Check out the roadmap and vote for your favorite features, or jump into the conversation in the multiplayer forum.

Today, users of Ziva VFX, Ziva Real-Time, Ziva Face Trainer, and related Ziva products received a notice from Unity that we are no longer actively selling or supporting these products. Active subscribers have the option to convert their existing license to a five-year term in the Ziva customer portal so that they may continue using the product beyond the expiration date of their existing license.This decision is a part of our ongoing company reset. At Unity, we are focused on our core: the Unity Editor and Runtime, Unity Cloud, and our Monetization Solutions. By focusing on these few areas, we believe we can best serve our community’s needs.Unity has also entered into an agreement with DNEG, a leading technology-enabled visual effects (VFX) and animation company for the creation of feature film, television, and multiplatform content, for an exclusive perpetual license of the Ziva IP. Unity will continue to retain ownership of all the technology acquired from Ziva Dynamics, and we will continue to evaluate the best way to enhance our core offerings with it over time.We extend a huge thank you to all of the creators who tried Ziva over the years.

In the 2024 Unity Gaming Report, 68% of studios said they’re developing multiplayer games – a number that’s risen steadily over the last few years in response to increasing player demand.Multiplayer games offer more competition and community, encouraging greater engagement and retention. In 2023, mobile-only games with multiplayer features had 40.2% more monthly active users (MAU) than single-player games, and overall multiplayer gaming revenue grew by 10%, a substantial bump compared to 0.6% YoY industrywide.Achieving that success requires investing a lot more into development, operations, and player retention, but this additional complexity is manageable with the right tools. Instead of solving all of these problems in-house, many game developers fill the gaps in their networking stack with solutions custom-built to help dev teams stay focused on gameplay. According to one study, 88% of studios are looking for new tools to meet their needs for demanding game projects.By offering Netcode for GameObjects and Netcode for Entities frameworks, as well as Unity Gaming Services (UGS) multiplayer solutions like Unity Multiplay Hosting and Vivox Voice Chat, Unity’s suite of live game tools covers the entire multiplayer game development journey, from concept and prototyping through to launch and live operations. This flexible system enables you to build within Unity’s ecosystem or mix and match whichever tools and services you need to fit your game and development team’s needs.Games with community are more engaging, have a lasting impact on gamers’ lives, and monetize better for their developers. My fondest childhood memories are playing multiplayer mode in games like Goldeneye, Red Alert, and Halo with my friends. Those memories wouldn’t be possible without their early versions of local, co-op, and online multiplayer.In today’s games industry, retaining customers and creating an engaging community are more important than ever. This is the most effective way to create a game that lasts forever and delivers long-term business success, which is why we’re continuing to invest heavily in multiplayer dev tools and services to help you build, deploy, and operate multiplayer games.Multiplayer Services power boldly innovative games. When Triangle Factory created Breachers, a 5v5 first-person shooter for VR, their strategic focus was on maximizing player reach through cross-platform access while keeping the lean studio team focused on gameplay. To do it, they needed the multiplayer backend on track with as little friction as possible.Using Multiplay Hosting, they were able to reduce server costs with a hybrid server solution, scaling quickly to 110k MAU in the first month, supported by UGS backend architecture and Multiplay Hosting. They also used a range of Multiplayer Services to simplify their stack and accelerate development time, including Authentication, Matchmaker, Vivox Voice Chat, and Leaderboard.“Unity Multiplayer Services has reduced development time on player features from a few weeks to a few days,” says Pieter Vantorre, Triangle Factory’s CTO. “Had we built everything ourselves, it would’ve required more resources and significantly more funds.”StickyLock also opted to use several Multiplayer Services together to streamline a complex development process. “It’s hard to quantify the exact amount of time that UGS has saved us, but I would put it in the ballpark of hundreds to thousands of dev hours,” says Jamel Ziaty, producer of StickyLock’s upcoming multiplayer game Histera.The StickyLock team was already tackling a big game concept – a fast-paced dystopian first-person shooter given a twist by a novel game mechanic called “the glitch,” which bounces players into different historical eras. The small team needed all hands on deck to execute on gameplay, so getting coverage in their multiplayer stack was crucial.“We chose multiplayer UGS because we wanted to have a third party take care of all complex logic for us so we could focus on the core gameplay of Histera,” Ziaty explains. “We use quite a few services from UGS, and it’s very useful to get them with one single provider. There’s less glue between various services for us to worry about.”In these games and many others, Multiplay Hosting has been tested at scale for performance, capacity, and customer savings:Unity Gaming Services hosts 77 million game sessions a month.Multiplay Hosting has supported more than 3 million concurrent users, demonstrating its ability to scale.Recently, Unity supported more than 175,000 game servers running concurrently.Multiplay Hosting reduces hosting cost per player by 30–40%.Multiplay Hosting has access to 292 data center locations.We want to support every customer that is building a multiplayer game. For that reason, we offer services ranging from Relay, Matchmaker, Distributed Authority, and Multiplay Hosting. To support the rapid growth in options for hosting multiplayer games, we’re making Multiplay Hosting agnostic to the hosting hardware by relying on our industry-leading, cloud and bare-metal hybrid approach that has scaled to millions of players whenever a game needs it. That means you will be able to rely on us to provide the infrastructure, or you can bring your own compute to Multiplay Hosting through your favorite cloud provider.We’re adjusting our multiplayer hosting and tools to offer greater flexibility to ensure that you can use the multiplayer hosting solution that has demonstrated reliability, performance, and success for years.We’re continuing to invest heavily in multiplayer game development and have a lot of exciting new features planned:Greater cloud flexibility: Bring Your Own Compute (BYOC) lets you run your game directly on the infrastructure you choose from our partner network.Flexible cloud provider marketplace spending: Our products and services will be available on the cloud providers marketplaces, enabling you to use your existing commits/spends with them.Additional CI/CD and observability options: Build the CI/CD pipeline you need with new external bucket upload and build tagging options, while new self-serve logs and metrics exports improve your game observability.Distributed authority:This brand-new network topology enables you to build large-scale multiplayer games with deep simulation in a cost-effective way, without the complexity of dedicated servers.New multiplayer game sample: We recently released Megacity Metro, a sample game that offers a blueprint for end-to-end multiplayer development in Unity, including services like Multiplay Hosting, Matchmaker, and Vivox Voice Chat.Multiplayer VR template, coming soon: Setting up multiplayer for VR games is difficult, so we’re making that easier with our new Multiplayer VR template, built on top of OpenXR and announced in the Unity Roadmap session at GDC 2024.We’re also simplifying your multiplayer game development with deeper integration between the Unity Engine and Unity Multiplayer Services in Unity 6, including:Multiplayer Play Mode delivers a first-class Editor experience so you can quickly test game functionality.Multiplayer Center streamlines your project setup.Unity Multiplayer Services, including Matchmaking, Lobby, and Vivox Voice Chat, allow for quick experimentation and richer gameplay, and these are integrated into the Unity Editor.Leverage Relay and Multiplay Hosting for smoother development, playtesting, and deployment.Check out the GDC 2024 Roadmap session to learn more about what’s in store and how these tools work together.I’m excited that we’re extending the flexibility of our Multiplay Hosting to support customers however they want to run their infrastructure. At the same time, we’re democratizing multiplayer game development to support any type of game for any device with a simple integration into the Unity Engine. With these investments, Multiplayer Services will continue to be the go-to solution for the most demanding, high-performance games and support the growing adoption of multiplayer gameplay across the industry.Stay ahead of the latest multiplayer development tools and share your feedback in the Multiplayer Forum. Check out the recent “Multiplayer resource roundup” blog post for the latest templates, samples, and demos for hands-on learning for all things multiplayer, including our new Megacity Metro sample game.

We’re entering the new era of spatial computing, where robust extended reality (XR) tools and flexible workflows can enable developers to add interactions, scale graphics, prototype, and test in-Editor. In the2024 Unity Gaming Report, we predict greater demand for XR games, and many of the contributing studios agree with this forecast.Unity’s senior advocate Antonia Forster sat down with Andrew Eiche, Owlchemy Labs’s CEOwl, to get his perspective on the future of spatial computing and practical tips on developing for Apple Vision Pro.Antonia Forster: Hi Andrew, thanks for joining me. Let’s start by looking ahead. What do you see as the future for VR and spatial computing?Andrew Eiche: One of the biggest things that we’re moving into is using XR devices as a general spatial computing environment for domain-specific tasks, with Apple Vision Pro and the changes to Meta’s operating system leading the way. We’re trying to solve the paradigm of how to do a generic workload in VR versus an extremely specific one.What does it look like when we actually want to work in XR? We’re trying to take existing tasks and transfer them to an identical paradigm in a spatial environment. Hopefully developers will settle in quickly and we will be able to understand what the breadth and depth of this media is.This is very important for us to do so we can discover the utility and intuitiveness of the technology. In this industry, platforms fall along a spectrum of these markers, and those with the most potential for adoption land in the high utility and high intuitiveness quadrant. With VR, we want to ensure that it’s moving in that direction – highly useful and highly intuitive, the quadrant where phones, PCs, and smart TVs fall into.Looking into the future, thinking about spatial computing helps make VR more useful, but we still need to work on its attainability. How do we do this? We change the primary input vector to align with the platform that players focus on the most: mobile. From there, we need to focus on removing friction with implementing hand tracking, making headsets lighter, and getting better optics.You spoke about the evolution of technology. What other tech trends do you think might impact XR in the next few years?Gaussian splatting is incredible, and I think that the next step for it is going to be figuring out better capture and animation. We solved the wrong problem with three-dimensional capture, where we assume that if we just cover the space and cameras or use light fields, it would be great, but there’s something that just works better, like a transparent Gaussian. I think we’re going to see a huge push into that and in figuring out how we are going to optimize it.I also think AI is going to have an influence. One of the really interesting use cases I’m waiting for is when we don’t have to render the whole frame, just part of it. What if we render 30% and then we kick it off to a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), and it just fills it in, based on all the data it has before and after? Suddenly, the graphics chip that’s sitting in our headset is now PC-capable. It’s literally how the reflections work for NVIDIA RTX™, so we are already walking down that road.There’s also AI filling in the gaps of weight painting, or seeing generative AI potentially replace a best-fit algorithm as a tweening. A best-fit algorithm has pieces to build with, and if the optimal fit is halfway between the pieces, using generative AI to move the slider halfway is interesting, useful, and has artist control. This would be great for animators who want to focus on doing their key poses and not spend time tweening. AI could help with that, and then the animator can go in and clean it up.Thank you for the insight! Based on how the XR space is trending, what is your advice for developers entering this era of spatial computing?From an interaction design standpoint, you need to break down the way you interact with something and not try to fit a square peg into a round hole. It’s tempting for developers to jump in and get deep into it, but as a new developer, I recommend approaching spatial computing slowly. Take your time stacking the right building blocks.For example, when porting Job Simulator, we started by thinking about the right times to use operating system-level interactions. When we put up a SwiftUI window for the Apple Vision Pro version, we debated when to use pinch. We really followed how Apple uses it because they’re extremely specific about when to use it and what to use it for.When you’re not interacting with a window, you’re interacting with a 3D object. At this point, you need to stop thinking about it like an app on a 2D monitor and more like a physical product design for a real-world object. Design objects in an intuitive way, following principles of real-world object design. Make sure that you continuously test your user experience, and realize that the only thing that counts is when the game is actually being tested with real users in a real space, on a device. You need to do the work.It’s key for you to have it in your hands, and have others interact with it. I recommend allocating plenty of time for modification. The experience can feel different on different platforms. Specs can differ and it’s important to be flexible.Lastly, what’s special about VR is how to explore it. Our version of exploration includes sitting at a desk that has closed drawers and getting to rummage through it. It’s incredibly interesting to pick up each object and see how it works and interacts. One of the key reasons that players prefer this interaction is because we’re putting things in their hands and allowing them to really mess with the world around them, and find out what that world is like. We are not making them interact with something that is far away or that they’re disconnected from.Getting more granular on tips for spatial computing, what advice would you give to developers looking to port or develop games for Apple Vision Pro? How has your experience been using Unity’s visionOS support while porting Job Simulator?We’ve been working closely with Unity and Apple, and aligning on the best way to bring our hopes and vision to life. We got Job Simulator running really quickly on Apple Vision Pro and used it similarly to building in iOS. One of the things that took some time to work out was making it a fully immersive game. Unity had to call a function that would communicate our desired output to the Apple operating system. Prior to doing so, we kept encountering a flat window, and if you closed it, the game was over.We were developing for a fully immersive game, and being a general computing operating system, exiting a game is new to us. Building for PC, we never had the second step of quitting the application, since the player can just hit the X. When we put it on Quest, it was really binary and the game either ran, or did not. Suddenly, on Apple Vision Pro, we were on this device where the game can go into the background, and we needed to do the work to figure out how to actually leave the application.My advice is to be really collaborative and open. You never know when someone will have the fix to a bottleneck you’re experiencing. It’s not only good for you, but the community as a whole. We’re extremely active on the Discussions forums, and in opening tickets and speaking with Unity. It helps us find solutions that also benefit the rest of the community. Submitting bug reports there has provided us with the opportunity to work with other devs who are in similar situations. It definitely speeds up our learning curve and is instrumental in helping us move development forward.I’d love to end this interview with one last nugget of inspiration and insight for our community. What’s the most valuable thing you learned about visionOS development that you will take to your next Apple Vision Pro project?We’ve existed in two ecosystems for years – Windows PC and Android. In moving to development for visionOS, which shares many similarities with other Apple operating systems,we learned in what spots we had made assumptions and leaned a little bit harder on the operating system in a potentially incorrect way. We figured out where we could have done better.Another key insight to keep in mind is the value of Facetime and sharing your screen to show other people what you’re experiencing – say, for debugging. That screen is your application running, your code running, and others can see your view perfectly. This is something that is notoriously hard for other headsets to do, and Apple Vision Pro does it effortlessly. That would be my fast tip.Want to know more? Read our new 2024 Unity Gaming Report, and check out this video playlist, where expert creators discuss this year’s biggest game development trends.If you’re ready to dive into Unity’s support for Apple Vision Pro, you can get tips from other devs developing for Apple Vision Pro and share your feedback on the AR/VR/XR discussion forum.

ATT and cookie deprecation signifies more than just a technological shift - it's a game-changer for marketers who are looking to reach engaged consumers where they are spending the most time. So how can marketers adapt their mobile advertising strategy and continue to ensure they reach their consumers where they are?In short, as the mobile advertising landscape changes, so should the way advertisers run digital campaigns. Let's break down how advertisers adapt their mobile strategy accordingly (spoiler: all signs point to in-app advertising where more than half of users are still addressable.)Brief history of privacy changes on mobileTraditionally, to advertise on web browsers or apps, marketers have utilized cookies and mobile ad IDs (MAIDs). That means marketers utilize unique user identifiers for tracking, retargeting, frequency capping, audience segmentation, and attribution. But following privacy changes over time, addressability has become significantly more challenging.September 2017: Apple released ITP 1.0 to limit the use of cookies on Safari and prevent cross-site tracking.May 2018: The GDPR became applicable in the EU.January 2020: CCPA gave California residents rights over their personal information.April 2021: Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency (ATT) on iOS.2024: Chrome plans to disable third-party cookies for all of their users. They’ve already started with 1% of their global users, and plan to expand to 100% of users by Q3. You know the history. Now, here are some tips for tailoring your mobile strategy to maximize your impact with both addressable users, users who have a unique identifier, and non-addressable users, users who do not have a unique identifier.Addressability strategy of advertisers in the industryHere are some commonly used practices that marketers use to get ahead of their competitors before the last cookie falls.Embrace first party data: Without third-party cookies, first-party data has a key role to play. Marketers invest extensive resources in building user trust, encouraging opt-ins, and building a robust data infrastructure.Collaborate with industry players to explore alternative ID solutions: Some marketers explore alternative methods to cookies and consider testing with partners like The Trade Desk or Liveramp, who offer other ID solutions to address these cookie-based challenges.Optimize in-app advertising: Mobile users only spend 10% of their time on web, so 90% of mobile time is spent in-app, particularly social media and gaming apps. The best part: the majority of supply in apps is still addressable. Marketers are optimizing in-app strategy with more personalized ad experiences, retargeting, audience segmentation, and strategic placements to engage users. Getting even more granular, let’s discuss how marketers can better understand non-addressable users.How advertisers segment non-addressable usersNon-addressable users are still very valuable - marketers are getting more innovative with how they market to them. While marketers may not be able to get specific-user level information, some contextual data is still available:Contextual information: The type of content users are engaging with (e.g. what they are reading, mobile games they are playing, how long they’re engaging with this content, how the app is rated, etc.) Contextual demographic information: General demographic information can be inferred based on the content users are engaging withTechnical device information: Device type, model, OS, connectivityGeographic location: Country, city, time of dayBy adapting to this constantly-evolving advertising landscape, you can continue to make sure you’re in the best position for growth - just make sure you’re using the right approach. And with users spending 5 hours a day on their mobile devices and 90% of that time happening in-app according to data.ai - building a comprehensive mobile strategy is crucial to long term brand success.That’s why it’s also essential to have the right partners - and at Unity, we can help connect you with premium demand sources, offer full data transparency, and much more.Get started with Unity’s programmatic solutions and get ahead of the game.

When Fika Productions set out to fill the market gap for a co-op roguelite game, they had their sights set on couch co-op. And then 2020 happened. We sat down with lead gameplay programmer Daniel Carmichael and developer Yannick Vanderloo to discuss their game and explore some of the development challenges they had to solve to get Ship of Fools to market during a complicated time for the industry.What was the inspiration behind Ship of Fools? Do you have any colleagues with a nautical background?Daniel: Our inspiration was first and foremost about filling the market gap for a cooperative roguelight. We’re all fans of the roguelite genre, and although there are a lot of great roguelite games, we felt that none of them did the co-op part really well.Thematically, we loved the idea of a boat because if the boat sinks, everyone sinks. That’s the main core idea: work together to keep the boat afloat. No one had any nautical experience, and we’re not sea creatures or anything like that.No octopi or salty sea dogs on staff. Got it. What does market research look like for you?Daniel: Our market research was really just a small Reddit research activity, but we got a lot out of it. On 25–30 subreddits about couch co-ops and roguelites, we asked the question “What do you feel is necessary to have a successful co-op roguelite game?” We received a lot of suggestions, summarized them into a document, and looked for overlaps and themes. This process validated some of our ideas and also gave us some new ones.What was your favorite moment of working on Ship of Fools?Daniel: We had a small running gag in the office. Every time we shipped a small feature, someone would say “We have a game!” And, one day, we merged a big part of the game that was really important, and I playtested it and I’ll always remember saying to the team “We have a sellable game!” and that felt really different. That was a very proud moment for us.Was there a particularly challenging aspect of the game’s multiplayer development, and how did you overcome it?Yannick: Networking in games is usually straightforward when either the host or the client takes full control. However, things get tricky when control needs to be divided, like when some elements are managed by the local player and others by the game host.Projectiles were particularly challenging in this setup. We wanted them to feel snappy when fired, and that involved numerous scenarios to consider. Moreover, when an enemy fires back and a player deflects the shot, we had to meticulously plan the interactions and ensure they felt right for all players, even in high-latency situations. There were a lot of edge cases to think about. Especially how to make it fast and responsive for both players.Daniel: Another big snag we ran into was networking. We spent a good year and a half designing the game for local co-op, not even thinking about online play. Then bam! The pandemic hit. Suddenly, our local-only game didn’t make much sense since everyone was stuck at home, not hanging out together.Originally, we were all about that face-to-face, in-the-moment vibe. That was the heart of our game. But with the pandemic, our publisher was like, “Hey, we gotta go online,” and we were like, “Alright, let’s do this.” And man, it felt like we had to rework a year’s worth of stuff, tweaking every part of the game for online play.So, a little tip for fellow devs: always have online play in mind from the start, even if you’re not 100% on it. Designing with online in mind is generally a solid move, and it’s way easier to strip it out later than to shoehorn it in after the fact.Tell me more about managing projectiles, and how did Netcode for GameObjects come into play here?Yannick: Networking our game ended up being a unique twist. We don’t have a traditional Netcode for GameObjects setup. Instead, we have objects that exist on both the client and host sides, each aware of the other’s actions and who’s in control at any moment. It’s like they’re constantly in a conversation, updating each other on what’s happening.For instance, in a scenario where a bullet is fired, if it hits the target on the host’s side, the game waits for the client to confirm the hit. The client might agree, or it might say, “Nope, I dodged that one,” or even, “I reflected the bullet!” Depending on the client’s response, the game adjusts the outcome, ensuring both sides are in sync.This setup allows for a lot of flexibility. Players on the client side can see immediate reactions to their actions, like a bullet being deflected, making the game feel responsive. However, the final outcome might need adjustments based on the host’s input, which can override initial reactions if there’s a discrepancy.It’s a bit of a dance, with authority potentially shifting back and forth. We found the simplest solution was to let each side do its thing, then reconcile differences as they come up, based on feedback from the other side. It’s a collaborative process, ensuring both host and client contribute to the game’s flow.Here’s a bit of a visual explanation for your readers.In the first image, we’ve got our multiplayer setup, where I’m playing as Todd, the host on the left, and my friend is Hink, the client on the right.Then, a crabster enemy pops up and launches a projectile. It’s all about coordination here: both the host and client are informed via a remote procedure call. Both players see the projectile, but whether it hits the boat or gets deflected depends on player reactions, and the host needs to wait for the client’s input to confirm the final outcome.Finally, here we see what happens when the client, playing Hink, deflects the projectile. There’s a bit of a delay if there’s high ping, so while the host might initially see the projectile hitting the boat, it’ll correct itself once the client’s reaction is confirmed. This way, the client feels no lag – it’s as if they’re playing in real-time, and their actions are mirrored by the host to keep the game in sync.The whole idea is to make sure that when you’re in the heat of the moment, taking a shot or fending off an attack, the game responds instantly, making the multiplayer experience feel seamless.Any other specifics you could share? Anything our readers could take away as a powerful lesson learned?Daniel: We hit a bunch of challenges, but one biggie was all about memory management. Getting our heads around assembly and Addressables was a steep learning curve, especially since this was the first multiplayer game for the whole team.What’s funny is our game isn’t even that asset-heavy, but the load times hit two minutes at one point, which is crazy for a smaller game. That definitely caught some heat from the players.So, yeah, we learned the hard way about keeping things streamlined, memory and asset-wise. We should’ve nailed down the basics from the get-go.What about Addressables? What specifically did you learn there?Yannick: The deal with Addressables is pretty straightforward. You’ve got to organize your assets into groups that make sense to load together at the same time. This way, you’re not bogging down your game with stuff you’re not even using in a particular scene.For example, our game has different sectors, each with its own set of enemies, scenes, and scenery. Initially, we lumped everything into one massive group, which was a nightmare for loading times. To streamline things, we started grouping assets by sector. This made a huge difference because now, we can load just the enemies or just the scenery of a sector as needed, making everything way more efficient and smoother in the end.Why did you choose Netcode for GameObjects (NGO) for networking?Yannick: We went with NGO for networking mainly because it’s backed by Unity. This means it’s likely to evolve alongside the platform and get long-term support, which is crucial for us. Plus, NGO had all the features we needed.The key thing we wanted was a peer-to-peer connection to avoid server costs, which can be a big deal for a game whose future sales and player base are uncertain. With NGO, we felt confident we were making a safe bet for both our present needs and future development. It seemed like the smart choice to stay within the Unity ecosystem and ensure long-term support for our game.What’s next for Ship of Fools?So far, we’ve rolled out two big updates, packed with fresh content, and launched two DLCs, introducing new characters to mix things up. These DLCs are totally optional, giving players more choices without making them feel left out if they decide not to grab them. The cool part? Those major content updates were on the house, and from what we've seen, folks really dug them.As for what’s coming next, we’ve got plans, but we’ve got to keep a lid on them for now. However, when we’re ready to spill the beans on future updates, you’ll definitely be in the know.Interested in multiplayer development? Explore the multiplayer section in the 2024 Unity Gaming Report to get insights from successful studios, fresh data on why more studios are developing multiplayer games, and a wealth of tips to help you and your team stay ahead of the curve.

App marketers now have more capabilities than ever before to reach new audiences. Yet, despite the wealth of options available, many app marketers choose to rely solely on social ad networks (SANs) for their user acquisition (UA) efforts.This is in part because many app marketers believe that SANs are sufficient for effective UA. But, this misses the significant impact that SDK networks can offer apps in terms of scale, optimizations, and resilience. All of which is left behind when marketers choose to only utilize SANs.Here we’ll address the reasons app marketers should be leveraging SDK networks, as well as the common misconceptions that lead app marketers not to do so, and the impactful resources left on the table when choosing not to diversify UA marketing channels.Capturing untapped growth opportunitiesScalability is the measure of app success, and effective scaling requires access to as wide a pool of users who can be converted as possible. While there’s no doubt that social ad networks offer substantial growth opportunities, they are not, or even close to, the totality of the market.In other words, limiting marketing channels to SANs means losing out on the untapped scale that is available through SDK networks, and as a consequence limiting your app's growth potential. Using SDK networks in tandem with SANs mitigates this loss of scale.Resiliency to market and channel policy changesExpanding beyond social networks also has the added benefit of resiliency to market and channel policy changes.SANs operate under a set of requirements different from SDK networks, needing to conform to standards unique to them. While your app may be currently compliant with these guidelines, they continue to evolve and update. When changed, your app would need to quickly adapt or stop running UA. Diversifying your marketing mix enables you to create a buffer with additional avenues for growth.And that’s just at the regulatory level. On a business level, the companies behind these social networks frequently change their policies. A change in policy could mean extensive work to meet the new requirements, which could then result in a loss of growth. By adding SDK networks to your marketing mix you can create a more resilient UA strategy that isn’t totally reliant on one set of policies that are subject to change.A bigger toolbox for optimizationsA significant benefit to a diverse UA marketing mix is having multiple processes for reaching high-quality users. Each SDK and SAN has its optimizations for finding you the right user for your app. But, with differing solutions come differing results. This is a weakness when marketing channels are siloed from one another, or used in isolation. However, used as a part of a comprehensive and diverse marketing strategy, this means you get access to more tools to reach high-quality users at the right price.Each network prioritizes users differently. So while SANs may miss the users you actually want, SDK networks could help you fill in those gaps, and vice versa. The larger your toolbox of algorithmic solutions, the better you can optimize and the more likely you’ll be able to find the right users for your app.Common misconceptions: Implementing SDK networksWhile there are many clear upsides to integrating SDK networks into your UA mix, some app marketers have been reluctant to do so. A large part of this reluctance is connected to the higher investment needed, both in terms of personnel and capital. But, this reluctance is for the most part based on two common misconceptions:Misconception 1: SDK network implementation and optimization is highly manualA common myth around SDK network integration and optimization is that it requires a lot of manual management in order to drive results. While this was true in the past, the industry has since become far more efficient and automation driven. This is particularly true for optimizations.Thanks to advancements like automated bid optimizers, much of the manual heavy lifting has been taken out of the equation. The ironSource Ads tCPA optimizer, for example, uses machine learning functions to optimize bids based on certain actions. In the past, this would all be done manually, but it’s now a streamlined process that only requires the setting of which action and price you wish to optimize for.Misconception 2: ROAS is difficult to solve forAn important metric for utilizing SDK networks successfully is return on ad spend (ROAS). This is the measure of revenue generated in relation to the cost of running the campaign. To effectively leverage SDK networks, app marketers need to know what ROAS goal they should be solving for. Without it, spending could exceed revenue, meaning that your UA could cost you more than it earns you.A common concern is that efficient ROAS is tough to identify and that generating a reliable ROAS benchmark requires a deep understanding of SDK networks and their optimizations. While this was historically the case, the industry has evolved to account for this difficulty. Most SDK networks offer account managers to assist marketers in calculating their ideal ROAS. Plus, solving for ROAS is now an established science - with the correct formulas and tools, it’s now far easier.Diversify your marketing mix for better UA performance and more resiliencyWhile SANs offer performance and scale and should be a part of your UA channels, there is significantly greater growth potential in adding SDK networks into your marketing mix. On top of this, having a diverse marketing mix gives your app a more resilient UA strategy that can adapt to changing policies, both on the regulatory and business levels. Combined with easily accessible automated optimizers and comprehensive account management, app marketers can now easily integrate SDK networks into their marketing mix for a more diverse and efficient UA strategy.Let’s get you started. Talk to a Unity account manager today.

Compared to traditional waterfall instances, in-app bidding can be advantageous. However one concern raised within the context of in-app bidding is the loss of manual tweaks to fill ad requests. Given the automation with in-app bidding, it can raise concerns about losing control and transparency.To help mitigate concerns around moving to in-app bidding, there are tools and services that help you maintain transparency and control. This article looks at three key pillars to addressing those concerns: testing, granular reporting, and understanding your ad experiences.Maintain control through robust testingIn the automated in-app bidding environment, you need to be able to test, learn, and adapt ad strategies to see long-term success. A/B testing gives you greater understanding of your monetization metrics, from average revenue per user (ARPU) to retention. Knowledge is power, and A/B testing is the only way you can truly measure the impact of different in-app bidding strategies. Running an A/B test can give you the answers you need to feel secure in this new landscape.Certain KPIs you can look at to help determine success could be: overall average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU), ARPU growth, increase in the number of impressions per user, and fewer managed instances. Tracking ARPDAU before and after you implement bidding measures overall revenue, not just performance by network.In addition, A/B testing gives you granular insights into your strategy so that you can continue to optimize and build a dynamic marketplace in this new ecosystem. Unity LevelPlay has a robust A/B testing solution that allows you to test a wide range of variables including bidding vs. traditional waterfalls, mediation groups, new networks, instance pricing, and ad strategy. Among LevelPlay customers who A/B tested integrating the Unity Ads bidder, the test group won in 78% of the cases, and those who applied the changes saw ad ARPDAU increases of up to 7%.Overall, A/B testing brings you peace of mind when transitioning to an in-app bidding world, confirming the switch is right for your app. After switching, a robust A/B testing tool continues to give you control over the bidding environment, allowing you to test and implement new optimizations.Learn more about A/B testing.Gain transparency with deeper reportingHaving transparency into your ad performance can help you make informed changes to accelerate your app’s growth. In-app bidding is an automated setup which will run based on general best practices, so the ability to make real-time, data-informed choices for your app is incredibly valuable, giving you a leg up on competitors.Features such as real-time pivot from LevelPlay provide granular visibility into monetization performance and the ability to make instant changes. Publishers can detect performance changes as they occur, compare revenue over time, and analyze network performance. Trackable KPIs such as eCPM buckets, ad latency, impressions, DAU, DEU, and sessions per DEU can help publishers understand not only ad performance, but user engagement patterns as well. These metrics can be sliced and diced by country, time, ad source, and more to give a deeper level of insight to determine what, if any, changes are needed.“In 2024, Unity LevelPlay remains focused on giving developers more control and transparency through granular analytics that provide actionable data in real time, to help optimize their monetization strategies and maintain user experience to drive higher retention and ARPU,” Omer Adato, Senior Director of Product Management at Unity says.Experience ads as your users doAnother concern raised is that since in-app bidding operates in real time and your ad space can be filled quite quickly without you even knowing, having transparency into the ads being shown in your app is key to ensuring you’re selling ad space to advertisers that won’t disrupt the user experience. After all, seeing a frustrating ad or having a glitchy experience can quickly cause users to churn. However you can gain insight that supports both brand and safety as well as revenue.Gaining oversight of your users' ad experiences supports not only branding and safety, but revenue as well. By blocking troublesome ads initially, you cultivate a healthier ecosystem until networks address issues. Once resolved, lifting blocks on revenue sources restores income while maintaining a quality user experience. Overall, targeted blocking and unblocking empowers monetization through cooperation on ad quality.Ad Quality from LevelPlay is designed to give full transparency into your ad experience. You can access a gallery of all the ads shown in your app, ad analysis, and user journeys. Publishers can also define a set of triggers in Ad Quality, called custom notifications. This feature proactively alerts publishers if a specific creative, advertiser, content rating, or buggy ad appears in your app, so that you can immediately respond to any critical needs.While in-app bidding is running automatically in the background, a feature like Ad Quality gives you much needed transparency into how your ad space is being filled.“Ad Quality helps us ensure that ad content in our apps is appropriate for our audiences. We get notified when titles with high content ratings are displayed, so we know when to reach out to the networks. This visibility is key for us.”-- Stefano Accossato, Head of UA & Ad Monetization at TutoTOONSIn an in-app bidding environment, working with a mediation platform that has the right features to maintain control and transparency over your ad strategy can help make the transition from traditional waterfalls easier and help create a top performing ad strategy.Learn more about Unity LevelPlay and how you can get started with A/B testing, Real time pivot, and Ad Quality.

Asset Bundles are archive files containing assets for your game. They are used to split your game into logical blocks, allowing you to deliver and update content on demand while making your game build smaller. They’re also commonly used to deliver patches and DLCs for your game. Asset Bundles can contain all sorts of assets, such as Prefabs, Materials, Textures, Audio Clips, Scenes, and more, but they can’t include scripts.Previously, it was necessary to build Asset Bundles manually, marking each asset accordingly, then tracking and resolving dependencies by yourself at runtime. Nowadays, all of this is taken care of by the Addressables system, which will build Asset Bundles for you based on the Asset Groups you define, as well as loading and handling dependencies transparently.While there are a lot of guides on how Asset Bundles work, I’d like to cover some lesser-known aspects of the system, with a focus on game performance, memory runtime usage, and general compatibility.Whenever you attempt to use an asset contained within a bundle, Unity ensures the corresponding bundle is loaded into memory, then in turn loads the asset in memory.While it’s possible to partially load specific assets within an Asset Bundle, the opposite is not allowed. This means that as soon as an asset within an asset bundle is loaded, it can only be unloaded if the entire group of assets is no longer needed.As a result, if your bundle structure is not ideal, you will often see increasing runtime memory usage as the game goes on, leading to deteriorating performance and potential crashes. For this reason, it’s best to avoid bundles with a large amount of assets in it, as it will end up taking up a lot of runtime memory and turn into a bottleneck for your game. Instead, aim to pack assets based on how frequently they are going to be loaded and used together.Asset Bundles are generally forward compatible, so bundles built with older versions of Unity will in most cases work on games built on newer versions of Unity (assuming you do not strip the TypeTree info, as covered later). The opposite is not true, so bundles built on a version of Unity that’s newer than the one used for your game build are unlikely to load correctly.As the difference in version between the bundle and the engine used for the game build increases, compatibility becomes less likely. There are also cases where the bundle might still be loaded, but the objects contained within the bundle cannot be loaded correctly in the new version of Unity, likely due to a change in the way the objects are serialized, thus creating issues. In that case, you’ll need to rebuild your bundles to maintain compatibility.There’s also a performance cost in loading bundles from a different version of Unity, as covered in the TypeTree section below.For these reasons, it’s recommended to test thoroughly whenever you update the Unity version of your game build against existing Asset Bundles, and to also update them whenever possible.Asset Bundles do not generally offer cross-platform support. While in the Editor, you will be able to load bundles from another target platform, however on-device this will fail.This is still true for bundles that contain assets that are not necessarily platform-specific.The reason for this limitation is that data might be optimized or compressed in ways that only work for the target platform. Also, bundles can contain platform-specific data that should not be shared between different platforms, so this prevents leaking content that is not intended for another platform.The Loading cache is a shared pool of pages where Unity stores recently accessed data for your Asset Bundles. This is global, so it’s shared between all Asset Bundles within your game.This has been introduced fairly recently, I believe on Unity 2021.3, then backported to 2019.4. Before this, Unity relied on separate caches for each Asset Bundle, which resulted in significantly higher runtime memory usage (covered below in “Serialized File Buffers”).By default, this is set to 1MB, but it can be changed by setting AssetBundle.memoryBudgetKB.The default cache size should be enough in most cases, although there are some scenarios where changing it might bring benefits to your game. For example, if you have bundles with a lot of small objects contained within, increasing the cache size might lead to more cache hits, improving performance for your game.Along with your game assets, Asset Bundles include a bunch of extra information and headers, used by Unity to know which assets to load and how, as well as a dedicated cache (depending on the Unity version you are using).A map of the assets in a bundle. It’s what allows you to lookup and load each individual asset in the bundle by name. Its size in memory is normally not a concern, unless you have exceptionally large asset bundles containing thousands of objects.The Preload Table lists the dependencies of each asset contained within your bundle. It’s used by Unity to correctly load and construct assets.This can become quite large if the assets contained in your bundle have a lot of explicit and implicit dependencies, as well as cascading dependencies coming from other bundles. For this reason (and many others), it’s a good idea to design your bundles to minimize the dependency chain.TypeTrees define the serialized layout of the objects contained in the Asset Bundles.Their size depends on how many different types of objects are contained within the bundle. For this reason, it’s a good idea to avoid large bundles where objects of many different types are mixed together.TypeTrees are necessary to maintain compatibility when upgrading the Unity version of your game build while still trying to load Asset Bundles built on older versions of the engine. For example, if the format or the structure of the object have changed, they allow you to do a Safe Binary read so Unity can attempt to load it regardless. This has a performance cost, so in general it’s recommended to update bundles whenever possible when you update the engine.It can optionally be disabled, by setting the BuildAssetBundleOptions.DisableWriteTypeTree flag when building your bundles. This will make your bundles and the related memory overhead smaller, but it also means that you’ll need to rebuild all your bundles whenever you update the engine version of your game build. This is especially painful if you rely on bundles built from your players for user-generated content, so unless you have a very strong reason to do so, it’s recommended to keep TypeTrees enabled.One case where TypeTrees can normally be safely disabled is for bundles included directly in your game build. In this case, upgrading the engine would require making a new game build and new Asset Bundles anyway, so its retrocompatibility aspect isn’t relevant.Each bundle has their own TypeTrees, so having multiple small bundles containing the same type of objects will slightly increase the total size on disk. On the other hand, when loaded, TypeTrees are stored in a global cache in memory, so you won’t incur a higher runtime memory cost if multiple asset bundles are storing the same type of objects.Note: Since Unity 2019.4, this has been replaced by a global, shared Loading cache, as described above.When an Asset Bundle is loaded, Unity allocates internal buffers to store their serialized files into memory.Regular Asset Bundles contain one serialized file, while Streaming Scene Asset Bundles contain up to two files for each scene contained in that bundle. The size of these buffers depends on the platform. On Switch, PlayStation, and Windows RT it will be 128KB, while all other platforms have 14KB buffers.For this reason, it’s best to avoid having a large amount of very small asset bundles, since the memory occupied by these buffers might become significant compared to the assets they actually provide.A CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) is used to do checksum validation of your Asset Bundles, ensuring the content delivered to your game is exactly what you expect. CRCs are calculated based on the uncompressed content of the bundle.On consoles, Asset Bundles are normally included as part of the title installation on local storage or downloaded as DLCs, which makes CRC checks unnecessary. On other platforms, such as PC or Mobile, it’s important to do CRC checks on bundles downloaded from a CDN. This is to ensure the file is not corrupted or truncated, leading to potential crashes, and also to avoid potential tampering.CRC checks are fairly expensive in terms of CPU usage, especially on consoles and mobile. For these reasons, it’s normally a good compromise to disable CRC checks on local and on cached bundles, enabling them only on non-cached remote bundles.By default, Unity offers three ways to lookup assets within bundles:Project Relative Path (Assets/Prefabs/Characters/Hero.prefab)Asset Filename (Hero)Asset Filename with Extension (Hero.prefab)While this is convenient, it comes at a cost. In order to support the last two methods, Unity needs to build lookup tables, which can consume a significant amount of memory for large bundles.In addition, loading assets using a different method than Project Relative Path will incur a performance cost, again because of the table lookup required.For these reasons, it’s recommended to avoid using those methods. You can even disable them when the Asset Bundles are built, which will improve loading performance for your asset bundles, and runtime memory usage.To do that, you can set these two flags when building your bundles:BuildAssetBundleOptions.DisableLoadAssetByFileNameBuildAssetBundleOptions.DisableLoadAssetByFileNameWithExtensionTo learn more about asset management, share feedback, or engage with the community and Unity staff, check out the Asset Management forum.

With market-leading multiplatform support and efficient development workflows for user experiences (UX), the Unity Engine and Editor are becoming the go-to solution for carmakers to develop their next-generation in-vehicle Human-Machine-Interfaces (HMI).On March 7, 2024, Unity Japan publicly announced a partnership with Mazda Motor Corporation to embed Unity in future Mazda vehicles. In a conversation with Seiji Goto, general manager of Infotainment and Cockpit Electronics at Mazda, we gained insight on their perspective on HMI and Unity.A vision for 2030: Driving forward with MazdaAs part of Mazda’s ambitious 2030 roadmap, research and development is accelerated in many areas, including HMI. The aim is to take on the challenge of simultaneously improving safety and value for customers through intuitive, great-looking, and responsive UX. Mazda will work directly with Unity to create a more “human-centric” in-vehicle experience.“Drivers process a variety of information while driving, and we believe it is important for them to be able to recognize and understand information inside and outside the car intuitively, and to operate the car intuitively,” explains Mr. Goto.The current world of HMIOver the last few years, the amount of information passed to drivers and passengers in vehicles has increased. Goto, who joined Mazda in 2015, points to the move from hard disks to cloud-connected vehicles, and the continuous growth of data to be managed just for the navigation systems alone.Throughout the industry, the same is true for the recent advent of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), where the amount of information displayed has scaled with system performance. A key challenge is to convey relevant information to the driver in an easy-to-understand manner while keeping the system quick to react and distraction free.Bridging the technology gap and the human-machine gapIn-vehicle HMIs now require technologies that were pioneered in the games industry. Systems like a scene tree for 3D graphics, animation blending, or easily exchangeable prefabs are a challenging thing to build from scratch, but these are standard in the video game industry. These technologies are ideal to tackle the challenges of modern HMI.“By utilizing Unity’s expertise in real-time 3D rendering for our user interface to spatially represent information from many car systems, we will be able to reduce the time and burden on the driver to recognize and understand information, realizing a safer and more convenient driving experience,” says Goto.Which UI works best differs between individuals. But Goto believes that by using Unity, the HMI can be personalized to meet each driver’s individual requirements.Unity and Mazda: A strategic partnershipFor carmakers, it’s important to have an integrated development environment that allows designers, developers, and other contributors to iterate on the project efficiently. Over the course of their search for a toolchain to power their next-generation HMI, Unity emerged as an innovative, future-looking solution.Goto outlines a multitude of reasons that make Unity a clear choice for automotive HMI:An active community provides a trove of documentation, tools, and solutions.The ability to tap into a large user base of game developers makes it easy to hire Unity experts anywhere in the world.Unity has a track record of multiplatform adaptability that reduces the risk of long-term technological changes.Development tools have ease-of-use benefits.The partnership between Mazda and Unity Technologies Japan Corporation is a milestone in automotive HMI development. “Mazda is accelerating research and development in all areas under the 2030 Management Policy,” said Michihiro Imada, Mazda’s executive officer in charge of Integrated Control System Development.“In the cockpit HMI area, Mazda will continue to evolve the interface between the human and car based on the ‘human centric’ development concept to deliver exciting mobility experiences. Specifically, Mazda will take on the challenge of further improving safety and convenience by enabling intuitive human operation and creating new value for vehicles.”Mr. Imada continues, saying, “By working with Unity, which is highly regarded globally for its technical capabilities and high quality in the rapidly innovating game industry, Unity can offer graphical user interface (GUI) solutions in the cockpit HMI and advance Mazda’s goal of human-centric vehicle engineering.”Future outlookWith the complex processes involved in creating an automotive HMI experience, there is a lot of exchange between departments such as marketing, manufacturing, UX design, and software engineering. On top of embedded HMI, Unity’s real-time 3D (RT3D) capabilities are used for VR-based UX testing, prototyping, engineering and design visualizations, car configurators, operational digital twins, and other applications in the automotive sector.Mazda believes that it is possible to introduce Unity in each of these departments, and if they do so successfully, they will be able to communicate through the same development environment. This will help to make the work itself more enjoyable and encourage more customer-oriented proposals. By building an open development environment and system, better products can be created.Learn more about how Unity can boost your HMI project at unity.com/hmi

Unity for Humanity Winners Livestream

The Universal Render Pipeline (URP) and the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) are built to help you scale and deliver your games for wide platform reach with the best possible visual quality and performance.We created two technical e-books to provide Unity artists, technical artists, and developers with a better onboarding experience to help you harness the wide-ranging capabilities of URP and HDRP. We’re happy to announce that both guides are now updated to include all relevant features in Unity 2022 LTS.The Universal Render Pipeline for advanced Unity creators and Lighting and environments in the High Definition Render Pipeline are written by Unity and external technical experts. Each guide provides a treasure trove of illustrated step-by-step instructions and best practices for creating high-quality, performant graphics with your chosen pipeline.With the HDRP guide weighing in at 186 pages and the URP one at 166 pages, these are two comprehensive resources you can reference throughout the planning and development of your Unity 2022 LTS-based projects.Let’s look at what’s in each of the guides.URP is a multiplatform rendering solution built on top of the Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) framework. It is the successor to our Built-in Render Pipeline and is designed to be efficient for you to learn, customize, and scale to all Unity-supported platforms. In Unity 2022 LTS, URP provides the majority of the functionality offered by the Built-in Render Pipeline, and in certain areas exceeds it. Our top goal is that URP is the leading renderer for mobile, XR, and untethered hardware.The URP e-book will help you migrate your Built-in Pipeline-based projects to URP, or start a new project based on URP.The updates are threaded through almost every section of this latest edition of the guide – updated instructions for setting up and applying the myriad capabilities of URP, new links, images, and code snippets – so you can rely on it to match as accurately as possible your experience using URP in Unity 2022 LTS.There are new additions and changes for areas like applying decals, URP quality settings and converters, comparing rendering paths to include Forward+, Full Screen Shader Graph including custom post-processing, LOD Crossfade, the SubmitRenderRequest API, and much more.To show you how comprehensive the URP e-book is, here’s a full list of the topics and workflows it covers.The URP e-book concludes with an introduction to the four environments included in the URP 3D Sample, which is available in the Unity Hub. Each environment has a distinct art style that showcases the different lighting and visual effect capabilities of URP for multiple platforms.You can also explore the URP 3D Sample through this short walkthrough video.HDRP is Unity’s high-fidelity SRP built to target modern (compute shader-compatible) PC and console hardware. It utilizes physically based lighting techniques, linear lighting, HDR lighting, and a configurable hybrid Tile/Cluster Deferred/Forward lighting architecture.We added so much new information to the 2022 LTS version of the HDRP e-book that it’s close to double the length of the previous one! Just like the URP guide, this one has new images, links, and information in many of its sections, with the biggest additions as follows.The water systemA 30+ page deep dive into the new water system covers waves, wind effects, swells, ripples, foam effects, decals, caustics, underwater scenes, water scripting, and much more.In addition to the e-book updates you can also dive deeper into the water system in HDRP through this video tutorial.TerrainFrom sparkling water to beautiful landscapes: A whole new Terrain section covers texturing and detailing, trees and vegetation, including how to work with SpeedTree, the Terrain tools package, painting terrain, ray tracing for terrain, and a look at the HDRP Terrain demo.Shaders and materialsWe also cover HDRP materials in detail in the new edition, with a section explaining material samples, variants, and properties; subsurface scattering; translucency; decals; HDRP Master Stack; Full Screen Shader Graph, and Volumetric Shader Graph fog.CloudsThe section on creating clouds is expanded to include steps for atmospheric and sun-based lighting and blending between two distinct cloud systems.Other key topics covered in the HDRP guide include:You can find all of the advanced e-books from Unity in the best practices hub and best practices page in the Unity Manual.