One of Unity’s strengths is the cross-platform element, which reduces the friction for developers when coding their applications. Unity have increased the flexibility of the platform with the announcement of the Unity Cloud, here at Unite 2013 in Vancouver.
While Unity thought that the community would take the challenge of cloud services on board, the feedback from the community was they wanted to have these services provided by Unity. With data from 22,000 surveys, Unity Cloud will launch in beta and cover three main areas; cross-promotion, monetisation, and player acquisition.
Built around an advertising system, developers can build their own apps to promote their own titles, share ads with other developers, and of course generate income from their applications. In-app advertising is one of the key areas of revenue growth, so expect this to become a vital part of Unity over the next few years.
More cloud services will follow, but Unity are working through the requests from the survey first of all – not surprisingly this is ‘show me the money’. Glu, Supercell, and Kaam are already participating in the service. You can register your interest for the beta of Unity Cloud online at unity3d.com/beta/cloud right now.