Unity Leaps To 250,000 Licensees

Unity's userbase has skyrocketed from 13,000 to 250,000 licensees year over year, the engine provider announced today -- with over 35 million users having downloaded Unity's free Web Player to date. The recent release of Unity 3 helped drive some of this accelerated growth. Says CEO David Helgason: "We bet on democratization of technology, and then upped the ante with a truly free license. Our growth proves how valuable enabling technologies are and how relevant 3D is to gaming as well as marketing, training, visualization and simulation." Unity claims that "100-plus enhancements" have been added to Unity 3, which it released on September 27. Although its licensees use Unity to develop games for console platforms like PC and Mac, Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Unity has perhaps most benefited from emerging platforms and the rapid growth of games for browsers, iPhone, iPad and Android, a space where it's among the most popular tools. As a company, Unity Technologies is in its fifth year, and just received the Wall Street Journal's 2010 Technology Innovation Award. The company's list of technology partners continues to grow; most recently, it said it would integrate Allegorithmic's Substance. Unity lists Bigpoint, Cartoon Network, Coca-Cola, Disney, LEGO, Microsoft, NASA, Ubisoft and Warner Bros as major clients -- along with Electronic Arts, with which the company recently signed a significant multi-year license deal.