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[Unity Technologies] Unity’s New SF Hood

Unity3D News Pipe — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 18:24:26 +0000

Last weekend the staff of Unity’s SF office were setting desks up in our new office. We’re now in the historic Jackson Square neighborhood nestled between China Town, North Beach, the Financial District, and the Embarcadero. We’ve been in our new space for a week now and I really love it! Not only is it great to have our own space, but our new neighborhood is definitely more of a neighborhood. We moved from an area in SOMA which is defined by its four lane one way streets, lack of retail, concrete, and the constant drum of jackhammers. In contrast, our new neighborhood has tree lined one and two lane streets, tons of brick, more retail, and is far more tranquil. South Park, Epicenter, and Whole Foods will be missed however.

The view from our office windows!

Our alley way.

A striking red facade around the corner, they sell modern furniture.

A grove of redwood trees by the Transamerica building.

Lots of brick buildings housing small architecture firms, interior design firms, and antique stores.

Lots of places to grab good food and drinks.

[Unity Technologies] Unity Turns 5, Happy Birthday!

Unity3D News Pipe — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:46:52 +0000

In 2003 three talented and creative individuals came together in Copenhagen, Denmark based on a shared vision about making their own game engine, one that they felt would quite literally change the game. They began to make that vision a reality while living the life of starving up-and-coming developers, working long hours and late nights with the hope that they would one day be able to share their dream with the world. Roughly two years later they did that and Unity was officially born. The first step came when Unity 1.0 was unveiled on stage at Apple’s WWDC conference on June 6, 2005. The second step came a day later when the first ever Unity license purchase was recorded on June 7, 2005, exactly five years ago today.

To help capture a bit of the feeling and emotion from those earliest of days I’d like to share some thoughts from David Helgason, our CEO. The following is taken from a blog post he made late at night on June 6th, the eve of Unity’s official release upon the world, titled “Last Day In This Life” (permalink):

I sincerely love my life.

It’s late again now, I’m listening to Xploding Plastix’ Amateur Girlfriends Go Proskirt Agents of the hateful genre nu-jazz… however it’s completely lovable like anything which is insanely too much.

… yeah… last day of what life? We’re wrapping up the last stuff for Unity, due to be released tomorrow, probably 2pm Pacific Standard Time (utc-8 if I recall correctly)… it’ll be out for the world to enjoy.

Keli is finishing off the webshop so people can actually buy Unity, I’m wrapping up the new Conception designed website, and Joe? He’s fixing bugs at what seems to be an average speed of 0.42 bugs per minute.

Most of the guys have gone home now – they know it’ll be a long day.

I need coffee. Now.

Little did he know just how much his life, and the lives of many thousands of others would actually change…

Fast forward to today, June 7th, 2010, there are now in excess of 170000 developers out there with Unity installed and that user base includes everyone from students and hobbyists on up to major studios like Electronic Arts. Additionally, the founders’ vision involved not just the creation of a new engine, but one that would empower developers to reach everyone, everywhere. As such Unity has grown from a tool that at first let developers target the desktop and web, to one that now allows them to target the desktop, web, mobile devices and consoles. Needless to say it’s been an incredibly exciting five years and we can only dream about what the next five (and beyond!) will be like. So today we celebrate and honor the 5th birthday of Unity. Please take a look at the press release we put out as it includes a number of interesting key facts about our company as well as a timeline of key milestones showing our progress over the last five years:

Unity Technologies Celebrates Five Years of Continual Leadership and Innovation in Making Cutting Edge Game Technology

Thanks to everyone at Unity Technologies for all the hard work and incredible passion you put into your work, we would never have this awesome thing called Unity without the blood, sweat and tears you’ve given. And thanks to everyone out there for your love, support and use of the product, without users out there creating cool content there is no Unity, period. So always remember that Unity isn’t just a product name, it’s a mission we’re all on together to democratize game development so we can all bring our digital dreams to life, and I for one couldn’t be happier to be a part of it.

Happy Birthday Unity!

[Unity Technologies] Unity Tech signs a three-year deal with LEGO!

Unity3D News Pipe — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:01:43 +0000

As y’all know the user base for Unity is exploding and that growth includes developers across the spectrum, from games to non-games, from small development shops to large studios, from social media outlets to major media providers. Today we have news about not just a major media provider but a major toy manufacturer as well, that company being none other that LEGO! Allow me to quote a bit of the press release that went out today:

Building on the success of LEGO® Star Wars: The Quest for R2D2 and BIONICLE: Glatorian Arena, Unity Technologies, the provider of the market-leading Unity development platform for 3D interactive content on the Web, PC, Mac, Wii™ and iPhone, announced today a new three-year deal with the LEGO Group, in which the company will standardize on Unity authored content for 3D content on www.LEGO.com.

As one of the world’s leading manufacturers of play materials for children, the LEGO Group recognizes the need to offer an innovative online environment for consumers to share their passion and creative flair. To do this, the LEGO Group is developing its web strategy to deliver an online consumer experience to match and enhance the real world fun and invention of LEGO products.

The LEGO Group identified Unity as the best 3D platform available to fulfill its short-term and long-term requirements.

“We’ve invested a great deal of time evaluating technology for the next phase of www.LEGO.com,” said Claus Toftegaard Matthiesen, Technology Manager of the LEGO Group. “We believe that Unity’s flexibility, strength and power will give us scope to create world leading content for our consumers and are looking forward to the cooperation.”

You can read the full press release here.

I personally find this exciting for a number of reasons. Of course it starts out by being a great business deal for Unity Technologies, so let’s get that one out of the way. But worth noting is that it will also serve all of us very well by helping push vast numbers of web player installs due to the high traffic numbers they experience on their website, that’s great for everyone using or adopting Unity for web based content. Finally, it’s also interesting as it’s yet another bit of validation that not only is our technology up to the task of delivering the best in-browser game content possible, but that it’s worth doing so for a mass-market site targeting users of a younger age.

All around this is a good deal and it’s news that I just couldn’t help sharing. Kudos to everyone that was involved in securing this deal, both on the business development front as well as our hard working engineers, for without them none of this would be possible!