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Comment by michaelvoz | Hacker News Reader

I wonder, what are the current opinions about the end game for Unity? What is the goal of seeking this new funding? My understanding was they are profitable.

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Beyond continuing to dominate the indie/pro game dev space, and slowly but surely expanding the scope and capabilities of the Unity Asset Store (devs selling code and assets to fellow devs), they're firmly on board the "democratization" train: make game development available to everyone [1].

Looking to the horizon, post VR hype, they're trying to take this further with experiments like Carte Blanche, which is creating VR from within VR itself for non-technical users [2].

But a consumer-oriented approach isn't in their DNA and isn't well aligned with their core business. Meanwhile, VR/AR startups who are entirely focused on this view of the world will evolve the right DNA and could build significant consumer-oriented value over the next few years. A war chest will come in handy if Unity wants to acquire that value and inject new DNA.

[1] http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/13/unity-has-democratized-gam...

[2] https://labs.unity.com/article/carte-blanche

Interesting! I wonder If there is a Unity hardware future as a competitor to Facebook or Valve.

They have the chance to be the platform for developing any sort of AR/VR applications. Not just for games, for any kind of application as the medium rises in popularity and eventually starts seeing mass market proliferation.

Well Unreal Engine has been going fast with all the Tencent money[1]. Unity took VC already[2], they put in the EA former CEO after that and it is heavily focused on service based/subscription based now[3]. They recently changed their whole setup to subscription only on June 28th[4].

My guess is they are going mostly subscription and infrastructure for games. They may one day offer a royalty or force larger companies into a royalty but right now not having one to companies like Nintendo is very attractive over Unreal Engine which takes 5% gross. They are taking money to build this infrastructure that has been in progress for 3-4 years to subscription/services. Their mission is to 'democratize game development' so I hope they always think of the smalls and mediums, not just the bigs. Unreal is really competitive now and if they don't take money they could slip. I have used Unity since 2008/version 2 and love it for mobile. I have also use Unreal since 2003 and love the latest version, they removed tons of unnecessary complexity to compete with Unity but still more for advanced devs and bigger PC/console games over mobile -- though they would like to take the place of Unity.

[1] http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-22-tencent-pai...

[2] https://unity3d.com/company/public-relations/news/unity-tech...

[3] https://unity3d.com/company/public-relations/news/unity-tech...

[4] http://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/06/16/evolution-of-our-product...

My guess would be Microsoft. Unity uses C# and it would fit into Microsoft strategy.

If that happens, and it is actually very likely, I expect UnityScript and Typescript to be rolled into each other.

Does UnityScript refer to a JavaScript variant or the C#-like language?

In Unity, you have the option to script in a javascript "like" language. It has quite a few strange syntax variations.

You can also use a (as far as I can tell) standard C# and a couple of other languages including one called Boo which is sort of similar to Python.

I learned C# to work with Unity rather than have to confuse my brain with strange syntaxes of languages I use in other places.

edit: Here is a link http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/UnityScript_versus_JavaScr...

The C# is entirely standard. It's compiled to normal IL bytecode. You can call any other IL code from it in DLLs as well, compiled in F# or VB.NET etc. You can even use a newer C# version than their supplied compiler supports if you set it up so you build the IL yourself since it uses the same IL. You lose a few conveniences like opening scripts directly from the editor but it works well otherwise if you want the new C# features. I believe it's also a bit more efficient that way to some degree.

UnityScript is so far from TypeScript that would never happen. UnityScript is absolutely nothing like real JavaScript and has none of JavaScript's real features.

Yes exactly. Also, unity is the de facto development environment for Hololens and MS is pushing it heavily.

It's worth looking at who's at the helm. You don't make John Riccitiello[1] your CEO just to be bought by Microsoft, unless the price tag is extremely high (possible). He's there to build a huge business, plausibly bound for IPO.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Riccitiello

Agreed. It seems likely Unity is on the IPO path.

Actually, Bioware/Pandemic made John Riccitiello its CEO just to be acquired by EA (but not before Riccitiello has resigned and joined the EA as the CEO again). Well, of course, this might have something to do with him being a partner in Elevation, which bought Bioware/Pandemic and, likely, invested in Unity as well (he had been sitting on the Unity board before becoming the CEO after being fired from EA).

Why does there have to be an "end game"? Why can't they be a company that just makes good tools and sells them to people?

If there's no "end game", why do they need such a large amount of funding?

Because they just took $181M of other peoples money and those people are going to want a return on that investment. If you want to be company that just makes modest profits year after year selling good tools to people you can't accept large bags of outside money.

Because it is a business. Actions have to be focused around objectives, where goals are the stepping stones to said objective.

"Why can't they be a company that just makes good tools and sells them to people?"

That in itself can be an endgame. A profitable game development company that makes great tools. However, if they are already profitable, and seem to already do this - why take the money? Hence my question.

There's no particular reason that profitability means funding should end. Companies should continue to attract outside funding so long as there are investments to be made for significant future profits that can't be covered by current profits.

I can see them being picked up by a player like Microsoft, Nvidia, or Intel.

Maybe a merge with Valve. So they will become the platform to build and to sell the games. They will have all the developers and resources on the game development world.

Doubtful. Valve has Source, their own game engine which their entire game portfolio is built on in one form or another. While rare it has been occasionally licensed out to other developers. Merging with Valve with two different competing big budget engines to maintain and improve. I just don't see how a merger could benefit either company.

My guess is they want to move much faster in some areas, in particular VR/AR, so that competition (mainly Unreal Engine) doesn't capture the market. That requires more investment than they can currently afford.

Unreal Engine is better in some aspects, but Unity has a very active community.

Someone wants to start cashing out or someone wants to IPO and this gives a starting value to the company.

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