Unity racing to add 64-bit iOS support

Unity is racing to meet Apple’s February 1st deadline to add 64-bit support in iOS to Unity.

After that date, Apple will require all new App Store apps to include 64-bit support and be built with the iOS 8 SDK.

A beta for pre-order customers and subscribers of the iOS ARM64 preview is expected to launch in January. Unity said its official release however will depend on the Unity 5 launch schedule.

It stated it is confident the majority of iOS projects will work with "little or no modifications”, but there is a chance that some infrequently used functionality is currently incomplete or contains bugs.

Though Unity expects to roll out the beta preview of IOS ARM64-bit based on Unity 4.6 before the February deadline, iOS 64-bit support will not be added to versions prior to 4.6.

Despite not yet having 64-bit support, Unity already has support for iOS 8.

“Bringing this technology to older versions of Unity is getting exponentially more difficult due to large differences in codebase,” read a statement from Unity development director Vilmantas Balasevicius.

“In order to ship iOS 64-bit apps support as soon as possible we chose to focus only on latest Unity 4.x version – 4.6. If you have unreleased games currently in production that are still being developed in an older Unity 4.x version, you will need to upgrade either to Unity 4.6.x or Unity 5 in order to publish it on the iOS App Store.”

Unity noted that current apps on the App Store not supporting 64-bit will not be removed from the store after February 1st. It warned developers however that there is the possibility that all apps may need to support iOS 8 and 64-bit in future.

You can find more details on Unity’s blog post here.