Unity now available for Xbox One

Unity Technologies is bringing its widely used game engine to Xbox One, thanks to a new partnership with Microsoft.

Unity will be available to anyone with an Xbox One development kit, and those who are registered or sign up for indie programme ID@Xbox, will be able to able to access the tech for free.

If you’re already a user of Unity Pro, Xbox One support will be added automatically to your exisiting license. Meanwhile Unity Free users will receive a limited Unity Pro license for Xbox One.

The current build of Unity for Xbox One is based on Unity 4.3, but the company is planning to update the tech to match later versions.

"We still have a lot to do," Unity’s Scott Flynn wrote on the company’s blog. "Unity for Xbox One is constantly improving to make your development experience the best it can be. In the near term we are working hard to continue wrapping Xbox One features and maturing the engine.

"As with some of the other new platforms, Xbox One will not support Unity 4.5 but instead will jump directly to Unity 5.0. Unity 5.0 will eventually be our recommended version for all Xbox One development, however, we will continue to make updates for the Unity 4.3 version of the product including XDK upgrades into 2015 to ensure teams that have already built to this version of the product can ship.

"We are excited to see how you use Unity to power the next generation of consoles with new and as yet to be seen experiences."

Several titles are already in the works using Unity for Xbox One, including upcoming indie hits Ori and the Blind Forest (pictured above), Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime and Cuphead.