Unity offered free of charge to Microsoft Studios dev partners

As revealed this morning at Microsoft's annual Build conference in San Francisco, Unity has announced support for Microsoft development partners on Xbox One. Developers published by Microsoft Studios, the company's game publishing arm, will receive Unity's Xbox One and 360 tools free of charge. "Our vision is to democratize game development and provide opportunity for all developers, from individuals to massive teams," Unity CEO David Helgason said in a statement. "Our collaboration will help further these goals by empowering our community to create games across Microsoft's powerful platforms." While developers published under Microsoft will get the tools for free, this offer doesn't extend to developers under other publishers, who will have to pay the normal license fees. However, the agreement with Microsoft also affords free platform support for developers working on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Current Unity Pro 4-licensed developers will receive a free license for the Windows Store Add-on, which is also being packaged into Unity 4.2 Release Candidate 1.