John Riccitiello (2016)

Nested Prefabs is now -- actually -- on the roadmap for real. Stay tuned for more detail in the coming months. And -- so glad Unity helped you get your start in the game industry.

We are exposing more of our code (C#) in public repositories like Github. We launched (experimental) our VR editor last week. We have substantially increased investment in documentation -- expect more. https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EditorVR

I just started playing Mario. Love it. Loved Lara Croft Go. Am very excited to see War Commander Rogue Assault come out this week. One of my favorites is City Skylines.

David is one of the people on this planet that most inspires me. His (and Joachim's) vision of democratization is what attracted me to Unity to begin with. I am personally very much a believer in the idea, and had the great luck of joining Unity in 2014, early enough to help make the call to launch Unity 5.0 Personal Edition -- our first free, full functional / all platform engine launch for Developers. All about Democratization.

We do support the new Nintendo Switch. And, i might note, both Pokemon Go and Mario are built in Unity.
On the Switch -- I am very hopeful it is a huge success. Like with all platforms, success comes from creators building great games, which i fully expect Nintendo to do for the Switch.

BLT

Many of the most successful game developers i have known over the years don't have college degrees. College can certainly help and programs in game engineering and design (like at USC, Utah, etc, etc) are great. But, success in the game dev world is really more about passion and focus. Really knowing games.

Our biggest competitor is developers / companies that create their own game engines. We are investing in Unity tech so that many of these companies will make the switch, and with it get better performance, more platforms, better outcomes.

Unity's first investment priority is our game engine. Over the past years we have more than doubled investment in core tech, for higher performance, more platforms, greater stability, new features (like timeline, metal, etc). We are specifically investing in mono, IL2CPP, nested prefabs and new input systems (coming in 5.6).

We also invest in services like ads and analytics because these help our developers by enabling them to generate more revenue.

Timeline will be great for making films, regular 3d or VR. We have not announced the release date, but expect it in 2017.

Drinking.

Kidding aside -- remembering i am lucky and blessed to work in such a cool industry and recognizing that not everyone gets to do things everyday for work that are fun. It makes working hard easy.

We have a great team working on 2d at Unity. Super strong, based in Singapore. They have made a bunch of upgrades with more coming in 5.6 and even more over the rest of 2017. Here is a link with some info. https://forum.unity3d.com/forums/2d-experimental-preview.104/

We are making Unity better for creating procedural content / environments.

But -- i play quite a few games, and so far, my experience is there is nothing like the exquisite detail that comes from the hand crafting a combination of great artists and programmers create when they are paying attention to every cell / pixel. Think the beauty of Bioshock Inifinite or, a personal favorite, Mirrors Edge.

Very different. EA makes games, and being a leader there means taking development risk on game content. Thinking like a player. Being sure the games are fun, exciting and innovative. Unity is about thinking like a developer. We always put our developers first -- figuring out what they need and want.
I love working for Unity. It helps to have our amazing founders, David H and Joachim A around.

I am with you!!

You may have noticed we have hired some great new people from the world of AI and Machine learning. Nothing huge to announce today... but we will let you know ...

Unity today is focused on helping he best developers (or new and aspiring dev) make great games. I am personally proud of Unity and love to see games like Pokemon Go sport our splash screen. I think increasingly devs are proud of their association with Unity and more will use the SS, both large and small devs.

Visual scripting -- on the roadmap. Timing TBD.

We very much support platforms internationally. Recently at Unite LA we announced our partnership with Xiaomi, one of China's leading platforms. We are very focused on AR / VR. Will announce more when ready.

I am a huge believer, long term, in AR / VR. When i put on an AR or VR device and try something great (like Unity's Editor VR) i am so convinced that the future for these types of platforms will be HUGE. But, i think it is going to take a few years for these platforms to reach audiences of 10's or 100's of millions like today's game consoles, or even billions like mobile does today. Net -- 2017 will be a growth year, but likely not explosive growth. Watch for big / massive games in 3 to 5 years.

C#

Work on something interesting.

Big question. One that i could talk about for hours. One thing i love about Unity is we are very serious about helping Indie developers create games that can compete with the biggest game publishers. I expect Indie gaming to rise as a % of the total industry for many years. But, game development will get more complex for Indie's. Real time multiplayer games are more complex and these will be the norm in a few years in mobile, challenging Indies to tackle more difficult and complex problems.

We are very much involved with Indie developers, in gaming and now in AR / VR. Unity 5.0 Personal Edition was all about Indies. We launched MadeWithUnity to support Indies. And recently launched Unity Connect, largely for Indies. And -- at Unity -- many of us play and love Indie devs and games.

Most people learn by joining a team and learning by doing. There are also a bunch of tutorials online, on Youtube and on our one websites, where you can find more. Many colleges and schools also teach Unity.

Hard to know. I'd guess non-game ends up bigger than games for the total world of VR. Initially, gaming is more than 2/3 but i think over time non game apps will grow more rapidly.

Unity is constantly changing. Perhaps the biggest change was the decision to more than double investment in the core engine. Another change was launching Ads and Analytics -- we did this after i joined the company as an investor and board member, and grew it in my time as CEO. But, I'd say the biggest issues are really what stayed the same. We continue to be VERY engineering driven. We remain very much focused on the idea of supporting developers, even doing a bunch of things that are unprofitable to drive democratization.

I think VR will be mainstream -- meaning 100m consumers using the tech regularly -- by 2020. And, i believe that within 10 years we will see > 1B consumers globally using VR apps

Edu is a huge priority for us. We have been expanding rapidly at the college / university level and are setting up courseware for this, that would also work in tech oriented high schools. We don't now have posters... will ask the team to make some and post on where to find.

First -- I am a MASSIVE Mass Effect fan. Loved the first three -- played through a few times with my daughters.

As for unannounced games -- i stay away from comments.

yes -- just not ones that include me.