Unity 6 Releasing to Power the Gaming Engine Market

Unity has been a giant in the game development space for a while. Yet, it hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows. Last year, the new engine's announcement was largely overshadowed by the change in the licensing agreements.

The runtime fee, which was previously removed for games built on the Unity Personal License, was overturned last week after much backlash. Unity Technologies will launch Unity 6 on October 17, 2024. The announcement came through the parent company's developer conference.

A large part of the conference was the premiere of a short film titled Time Ghost. The four-and-a-half-minute cinematic showcases much of what can be done with Unity 6. However, many of its technical achievements might still be missed as you are drawn towards the detail and smoothness of the rendering.

The Unity 6 engine will be shipped with customizable graphics rendering, added support, simplified multiplayer game development, new tools for games on web browsers, and a WebGPU backend. Unity's new CEO, Matt Bromberg, has also promised frequent updates, new features, bug fixes, and performance boosts, all of which will start with its first update, set to launch in April 2025.

This particular update, marked as Unity 6.1, will mostly provide new features, such as support for larger and foldable screens, Deferred+ rendering, and new build profiles. Bromberg has also spoken about developers wanting more stability and, among other promises, addressed it. Unity 6 is set to be the engine's biggest and most stable release.

Apart from RE Engine by Capcom and redENGINE, which won’t be used for Witcher 4, many developers will also be glad to hear that there is a promise of a long-term support plan, which will also be part of the frequent updates. Instead of new generations, the updates are to be set as 6.1, 6.2, and so on. Unity will also provide tools for an easier migration through the iterations. Of course, these updates will contain less, but as previously mentioned, they'll be more frequent, essentially offering a far smoother transition over time.

Some things are set for later, so those hoping for CoreCLR will be somewhat disappointed. Unity 6 will still remain with Mono Runtime, and of course, CoreCLR is still coming with Unity 7. Another feature that will be sorely missed is the removal of selecting between URP and HDRP.

Overall, the updates seem positive, and the outlook is good enough. It will be interesting to see how developers utilize Unity 6 and how the engine competes with its rivals at Unreal Engine and the rising Godot.