EA Signs Broad, Multi-Year License For Unity Development Platform

Electronic Arts today announced it's purchased a multi-year enterprise license from Unity Technologies that "enables every EA studio and developer across the globe full access to the entire range of Unity products from web and mobile to consoles and beyond." The company promised "a number of titles are in development" using Unity technology and that they plan to "utilize the Unity development platform across multiple franchises and genres." In the announcement, EA cited the Unity environment's ability to produce code for multiple platforms with a single click as a major selling point, and one that the company hopes will reduce development costs for multi-platform titles. "Unity's unparalleled platform support ensures that when we have something we want to share with our players, we can reach them quickly on the platforms they have," said EA VP and Chief Creative Director Richard Hilleman. "We have spent a lot of years looking at development assets of all kinds. Unity represents one of the deepest commitments we have ever made." "We're excited about and proud of our long term relationship with Electronic Arts," said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. "Unity's ability to straddle from the highest-end productions to the littlest development teams is something we're immensely proud of." EA previously used the Unity environment in the production of 2008 browser-based title Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online. Since its launch in 2007, Unity claims over 170,000 developers have used their technology to create games for platforms including the Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, iPhone, iPad, Android and their browser-based web player, which has been installed over 30 million times. Yesterday, the company announced support for Allegorithmic's Substance Engine would be integrated into an upcoming Unity update. Financial details surrounding the agreement were not disclosed.