Category Archives: This Just In

Unity’s Mobile Tools Go Free For Indie Developers

Posted on by
Reply

Unity LogoUnity Technologies has announced it’s making its mobile tools available for free to indie developers and small studios. Before today, these add-on tools for mobile development cost $800. By making them free, Unity is establishing itself as an even stronger supporter of the independent developers community, and is opening doors for those who previously did not have the means to realize their goals.

“We were able to make Unity free for the web and for desktop computers a while ago, but have been dreaming of doing the same for mobile for what seems like forever,” said David Helgason, CEO, Unity Technologies. “Mobile games development is possibly the most dynamic and exciting industry in the world, and it’s an honor to be able to help so many developers be so successful in fulfilling their visions and in building their businesses.”

Developers using the mobile add-ons will not pay royalties or license fees either. The add-ons are now simply an extension of Unity Free. The free tools currently support Android and iOS, and in the coming months Blackberry 10 and Windows Phone 8 support will get the same treatment.

You can read more about Unity’s announcement on their blog.

Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks Reach General Availability

Posted on by
Reply

image_thumb_4C791D53Microsoft announced that they are officially taking the wraps off of the IaaS services including new features and price reductions.  New features include new VM image templates with SQL Server, BizTalk, and SharePoint installed as well as new VM sizes to choose from.  Prices are also getting cut by 21%-33% for IaaS and PaaS VMs).

Our built-in image gallery of VM templates includes both Windows Server images
(including Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server, BizTalk Server and SharePoint Server) as well as Linux images (including Ubuntu, CentOS, and SUSE Linux distributions).  — Scott Guthrie’s Blog

Continue reading →

Sony and Unity Announce a Strategic Partnership: Unity for PlayStation

Posted on by
Reply

SonyUnity

This afternoon, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) and Unity Technologies announced they have entered into a strategic partnership to offer “Unity for Playstation,” which will optimize Unity’s popular game engine and development tools for SCE’s PlayStation platforms. What this means for developers is they will now be able to port their games to and from any PlayStation platform more easily, including PlayStation Mobile, without extensive re-coding, or starting from scratch. Developers using Unity for PlayStation will be able to take advantage of some of PlayStation’s unique features such as those found on Vita, and also be able to integrate with SCE’s future cloud services, some of which was introduced during the PlayStation 4 event this past February.

While Unity currently offers PlayStation 3 support, Unity for PlayStation will allow developers to branch out to Sony’s other platforms: PS4, PS Vita, and PlayStation Mobile. The partnership will hopefully make Sony’s PlayStation platforms more approachable to the game development community at large.

For more information about the announcement, check out Sony Computer Entertainment’s press release here, or read Unity Technology’s blog post here.

Microsoft Makes Git Option Available for Source Control in TFS and Visual Studio 2012

Posted on by
Reply

VSLUVGITAt the ALM Summit in Redmond this morning, Microsoft Technical Fellow Brian Harry announced that Visual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Services would now support Git, a popular distributed version control system.  This announcement means that developers using TFS will now have an option for source control other than TFS which includes tooling and Visual Studio 2012 support.

  • Starting today, Team Foundation Service – Microsoft’s cloud-hosted ALM solution –will support Git. Developers can use TFService as a full Git server with standard Git implementation, allowing development teams to choose the source control workflow that best suits the way they work.
  • Visual Studio 2012 is now able to connect to any Git host, including TFS, CodePlex, GitHub and Stash, using an extension available today as Update 2 preview. Git support will be fully integrated into all editions of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server in a future release.

Continue reading →