Microsoft targets Unity developers with game porting lab in August

Yes! Xbox, please! #SaveXboxWP

Bring em..

Do they want to be one in a million +. or 1 in less than 500 000! More chance to be seen here!

Exactly.

Yeah

Finally gave in Saturday and downloaded Unity to start working on my first game!

Good luck to you. Hope to see your app in the store.

Thank You. Hopefully I'll have beta announced for testing in the forums within the next few days. :)

I've heard bad things about unity. A lot of people won't play certain games just because of unity.

Bad things? Such as...? Edit: After reading through http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/gamelogic-in-unity-how-bad-is-it-really... I'd venture to guess most "bad" things are mostly lack of understanding the framework. I hear a lot of similar complaints from my Java dev coworkers learning .NET.

I pray no mind to it. I've been using Visual Studio since VB5 and I've learned, people are going g to whine and complain about any and everything.

People care what development environment a game was made in? For real? That's a thing? I've just finished my first Unity project (not yet released, but coming very soon to WP8 and Windows 8.1, see grogansoft.com for details if you're interested), and I don't see any reason for a *player* to care that Unity was used to create a game. As a developer my first experience with Unity has been...mixed. It's great overall, but I found it quite buggy with certain things, and the most recent updates have caused a fair bit of struggle, specifically for the Windows Store version of my game. I have learned to avoid upgrading Unity mid-development as they seem to break and change things that can really affect a game (my game physics was completely altered by the upgrade from Unity 4.3 to Unity 4.5, but fortunately there was an easy fix - but Unity didn't actually mention that they totally changed physics!). But the benefits are that I can use C# and easily export my game to any platform. All my previous apps and game were made totally in Visual Studio and therefore can't easily be ported to other platforms. My Unity game can be ported to Android or iOS is no time (though I'm sticking with Windows for now). Unity games seem to be battery drains, but that's true of games in general.

In your haste to defend Unity, you've actually ended up pointing out more bad than good,lol.

I wasn't 'defending' Unity. It's a product that isn't perfect; like pretty much all products. It's absurd to entertain the idea that people would avoid playing a game based on the engine it was created with...mind boggling.   FWIW Unity enabled me to make a game I could not have made otherwise, and it enables lots of people to create games and bring them to multiple platforms (there are several Windows Phone games that probably wouldn't have come to this platform without Unity, such as Bad Piggies).

I don't disagree with you. I am currently knee deep into Unity as I respond to this comment. It's just like anything, if its not ABC easy people will complain. Sadly, we are in a world where people expect everything to be done for them.

You're not wrong! Unity is great, and it makes it easy to create games, but like anything it's only part of the solution - it still takes effort and skill to create something worthwhile.   Good luck with your game!

It's actually a sort of reverse thinking...you play enough bad games that use the same engine, and you start to associate it with something cheaply made or rinkadink, then everytime you play a game and you see that Unity splash screen, it immediately feels like its about to suck. So that's all to say it takes *that* much more to actually overcome that sinking feeling people get. By contrast, it can also make your game seem better due to the amount of shitty games out there using unity.

Unity is a great game engine; however, many noobs use it (since it's free)... Which mean bad games, there a lot of really great games though...

Guess I'm one of the (noobs) then considering I'm creating my first game with it.

I think he's referring more to those who are n00bs to software development in general.

IDT, it's people playing it because of Unity but more the devs not wanting to learn it.

I hope they bring Plague Inc to Windows Phone !!

Sony is doing this too for "Playstation phone" like a few articles described it like that. Good to see more and more is all about games these days.

I did one at Orlando, and compared to other developer events such as //Publish, it was rather poor quality. Though, this one may be bigger.

Ohhh i want Dead Trigger 2; it´s currently developed using unity engine.

The developers, Mad Finger games said they weren't bringing any of their games to WP. It's a shame too, the Dead Trigger series is among the best first person shooters you can play on a mobile device. Posted via Windows Phone Central App

I just want more Xbox games.

I Love Xbox Windows phone & Xbox Console

Unity is bad. I want my MP3 BGMs, not something within one file.

Counter strike like iphone

Unity developers don't care about WP, because it has small part of the market. But there are C# developers want to develop games only for WP, but Microsoft don't allow us by supporting stupid unity instead of creating new version of XNA.

Old news

Bring back xna! (for win8.1)

Microsoft should make it easier for devs to get their games Xbox Live enabled or certified...because lets face it, everyone likes achievements...and if u look at the competition, Apple's game center and Google's Google play games both offer achievements and Microsoft's offering is far superior to both of them because it ties in to a bigger ecosystem with Xbox 360 & Xbox One....So if Microsoft can bring some of their signature franchises to the mobile platform including Forza, Gears of War, a proper Fable rpg, complete with achievements....i think it would draw more people to the platform...especially those who already have invested into the ecosystem by purchasing an Xbox or Windows 8 device....

Yes, this would be great. The potential problems would be in certifying the achievements and ensuring a high standard. Imagine the time it would take someone at Microsoft to play a game all the way through and earn/test all the achievements! There has to be some way of ensuring that achievements are fair, fun, and achieveable. If Microsoft were to charge 1 man-day of time for achievement checking (conservative!) that would place it outside of most amatuer dev budgets. They'd also have to keep an eye out for clowns gaming the system by releasing crap games with easy achievements to boost their gamer score. I am about to release my 2nd game and I use achievements, but of course not Xbox achievements. It still makes games more fun and is an easy way to add value and challenge.

Will there be a telecast on channel9 or somewhere else too?

Telecast would be great ... I'm in the middle of porting my Windows Store game, Gun Frenzy, to Windows Phone and would love to see some tips and tricks from the pros.

   Now, hopefully they can convince the developers to make the games Xbox Live compatible.