If you’re a startup that’s building a game development platform, you can’t get a much bigger endorsement than the one Unity is getting today from Electronic Arts, the multi-billion dollar developer of the Madden series, Harry Potter games, and more. Today, the companies are announcing that EA has signed a multi-year enterprise deal with Unity: EA will be using Unity’s platform across multiple franchises, and all of EA’s developers will have access to the “entire range of Unity products from web and mobile to consoles and beyond”. The timing is also good: Unity is launching its 3.0 upgrade next week.
The EA partnership for Unity is big in and of itself, but check out this quote from EA VP 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. It lets us produce products to our quality expectations, while freeing our creative contributors to explore new ideas, without breaking the bank. 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. We look forward to continuing collaboration with our friends at Unity Technologies on future innovations and the new experiences we will create for our players.”
Sequoia-backed Unity was founded in 2003, and has created a game development platform that’s relatively easy to use and is quickly growing in adoption. It was built with cross-platform development in mind, which means that developers can build once and deploy their games to multiple game consoles, and mobile platforms like the iPhone and Android (though some tweaking is obviously required).
EA has actually been using Unity since 2008, but this marks the start of a broader utilization of the platform.
Unity Technologies develops tools for game developers and creative visualization professionals alike to deliver the best 3D web content, as well as games for PC/Mac, iOS and Android devices, the Wii+PS3+XBOX360, and beyond. Scaling from casual games to full-scale MMOs, Unity sets a new standard for social professional software, and is used by AAA-teams, hobbyists, and everyone in between.
Electronic Arts is an American developer and publisher of computer and video games. They own well known game studios such as Bioware, Mythic, and Maxis games and have developed titles from the Need for Speed series to Crysis.
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