The keynote address for Unite 12 has seen the announcement that Windows Phone 8 will get full support for the Unity engine. Unity is a very popular engine and it was notably absent from the Windows Phone 8 announcement. The next version of the OS looks to be getting some excellent gaming support with native code and these powerful rendering engines.
The engine is used to power a host of games across and number of platforms and hopefully this means rapid porting of those games to WP8 devices. Unity is one of the top engines on the market so this support is pretty exciting for Windows Phone.
Here is what David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies, had to say on Windows Phone 8.
“Our mission at Unity has always been to provide solutions for developers to effortlessly bring their work to as many different platforms as possible. The Unity community has been asking for access to Windows Phones and have been eagerly anticipating the release of Windows 8. We’re happy to announce that we will support both.”
Unity Technologies and Microsoft are currently working hard to bring both deployment options to developers using Unity as soon as possible and will be discussing the process during a session at this Unite 2012, Unity’s dedicated developer conference.
John Richards, Senior Director for Windows App Marketing at Microsoft, notes,
“We are excited that the Unity community will now be given the opportunity to develop world class titles for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. The number of high quality Unity-authored games for the PC, Xbox, and mobile devices already created is staggering and we’re looking forward to seeing these products appear in the Windows Store and the Windows Phone Marketplace.”
Windows Phone 7 was skipped by the company for various reasons so its good to see it finally arrive for WP8. The support is said to arrive after an update to version 4 of the tools.
As yet no dates have been given for the release. Unity is another great addition to the platform and should enable some very impressive looking games. Along with Havok and renewed support from EA, Windows Phone 8 could finally see the platform fully fulfill its promise of being the number one choice for gamers. The addition of native code and advanced 3d engines, combined with Xbox Live will make the next version of the OS a powerful gaming device.
As always we would like to know what you think about Windows Phone 8 and games. Are you a dev? If so let us know if this gets you going!
Source: Developer-Online
