You’re probably wondering whether you’re reading the title right and for 500 of you, you are! Today we put out a press release offering up some incredibly cool news about Unity and our coming support for Android powered devices. Not only are we now actually pre-selling Unity Android Pro licenses, but we’re going to give a Google Nexus One to the first 500 people to pre-order one! I hope you’re excited about this kind of news (I wish I was eligible!) and so you can start learning more about this offer by reading the full press release:

Unity Technologies Opens Pre-Order of Unity Pro for Android With Sweet Deal

Then stop by our website for even more information, like the terms and conditions of the offer:

http://unity3d.com/unity/coming-soon/android

And then you’ll hopefully stop by our online store and try to be among the first 500 people in order to get your free Google Nexus One:

Go to the store

As always folks, it’s Unity for the win!

Update as of June 29, 2010
I’m back to provide some updated information on the phones being offered as part of this program. The first 500 developers that buy Unity Android Pro will receive an unlocked Google Nexus One with Android 2.1 or later installed. The phones will not come with any service plan, those that receive a phone will need to secure a service plan on their own (the phones will be compatible with any GSM carrier worldwide). Please keep in mind that these devices are 3G compatible with all GSM carriers outside of the USA, but within the USA they are 3G compatible only on the T-Mobile network, users on the AT&T network will have EDGE service instead.

Today is an exciting day for all of us here at Unity Technologies as we’re now shipping pre-release beta builds of Unity 3.0 to the first 100 people that pre-purchased the licenses since they went on sale earlier this year (reference)! These folks are the first public users (those not on our staff or in our private alpha/beta test groups) to get their hands on the new release, but they’ll soon be followed by everyone else that has pre-purchased a Unity 3.0 license as those will be rolled out in the next few weeks. But what does that mean in terms of a final ship date? Well, it means that we’re closing in fast and we’re now within a month or so of our launch date. So let this be your call to action if you haven’t yet pre-purchased a Unity 3.0 license, on launch day the prices go back to their normal list rates instead of the pre-purchase discounted rates we’re offering now. Get ‘em while the gettin’ is good!

If you’re not up to speed on what to expect from the Unity 3.0 release then please take a look at this:

Unity 3 Coming Soon

When you’re done with that have a look at the following blog posts our engineering team has made that describe some of the new features in more detail:

Unity 3 Feature Preview – Asset Management
Image Effects Video
Introducing some of the new Image Effects
3.0 Upcoming demo
Unity 3 Feature Preview – Snapping & Marquee Selection

What’s more is that we’ve lifted the embargo on public discussion about this new release. What that means is that those who have been testing beta builds already can now talk about the coming features openly so the Unity Community Forums, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are all afire with chatter about the coming coolness that is Unity 3.0. And with that, let the countdown begin!

• It’s free for existing Unity iPhone users.
• It’s good for iPhone Basic license users.
• It’s ready for your iPad games!

Sailboat Championship PRO HD by Infinite Dreams

It’s unbelievably easy to port your iPhone app to iPad if you’re using Unity. In most cases it’s enough to scale up textures, tweak controls and select new splash screens. The latter may be the hardest part here

And a tip for non-USA guys: Unity iPhone 1.7 is good for you — even if you do not have an iPad yet — as it allows you to test your apps in the iPad Simulator! Almost two dozen iPad launch titles were made with Unity iPhone 1.7 using the simulator and approved by Apple, so get going!

Have you released any iPad apps yet? Share your success stories in comments or in our iPhone forum. We really care about your experience!

For more information check out the release notes and the press release.

Update: Unity iPhone 1.7 featuring iPad support is available for download!

Need evidence?

That’s our iPhone Demo from GDC running in the iPad simulator, here’s how the conversion process works :

1. Import the project with the forthcoming version of Unity iPhone
2. Select iPad as the target in the build settings
3. Hit build button
4. Enjoy

The process was simple since the project was initially designed as resolution independent. How would your game behave on a larger device? Answering that question will help you determine how much work will be required to make your iPhone game iPad ready. So while we don’t have a solid date to share just yet, there’s nothing stopping you from beginning the process of making your app iPad ready.

I’m sure you have many questions and while we might not be able to answer them just yet, we’ll be getting more information out as soon as we can — I promise!

Yes, it’s exactly that mysterious build that adds generics support, enables multiplayer for iPhone and noticeably shrinks final binary size. You might have seen some trackbacks on Unity forums.

So what’s so good about it?

Now imagine that you can use all that .NET 2.0 third party libraries, you can use your Unity 2.6 projects without a hassle of converting your code to a restricted .NET 1.1. That’s for the win!

Next is Unity Networking support. Basically you can take your 2.6 multiplayer game, implement controls for iPhone and it will just work. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?

Remember that old-good Star Trooper demo? Now imagine same thing with multiplayer support. It does work with several Macs and iPhones connected simultaneously. Now it’s only your imagination that limits your multiplayer possibilities for iPhone!

You'll have that demo as soon as corresponding tutorial is ready for you to get booted up immediately.

You remember that iPhone apps cap has been increased to 20 megs, don’t you? That means that more of your games are available for immediate cellular download for your customers. And if you use Unity iPhone 1.6, you’ll have better chances to keep your game size under that cap. So just go now and build your old game with Unity iPhone 1.6.

Do you feel the size difference? Do you see reduced startup times? Do you notice reduced memory footprint? You do! Sweet, we can see you smiling now.

Oh, by the way, in case you haven’t noticed, this all was free for you… yep, a small detail you hadn’t thought about

• The Unity Asset Server can now be hosted on Windows! (in addition to Mac OS X and Linux as before)
• The Unity Asset Server can now be hosted on Debian-based Linux distributions as well.
• The Unity Asset Server now uses an updated version of PostgreSQL.
• When used with Unity 2.6 (and later) the Unity Asset Server now offers faster check-in times.
• There are tools to help simply the backup and restoration of Asset Server databases.

If you’re interested in reading more about the Unity Asset Server or the 2.0 release in particular then please use the following links:

Press Release
Unity Features: Unity Asset Server
Download the Unity Asset Server
Unity Asset Server Guide

Enjoy!