Unity running on Google Chrome â??a game changerâ??

Unity Technologies has unveiled the latest milestone in its bid to be the most accessible game engine provider in the world.

The emerging game engine group – which has flourished in an era of mobile and socnet gaming – has demoed a version of Unity running in Google Chrome.

The technology behind the feat is called Native Client, and Unity says it’s “a potential game changer for rich web applications and games in particular”.

Writing about the technology on the Unity Blog, Brett Seyler explained:

“If we really cut to the chase for why this matters for Unity, it’s because what we’re showing is Unity running in Chrome with no plugin at all.

“That’s right, there’s no Unity Web Player installed on the machines running Unity content in Chrome. Rather, with Google’s clever technology, we’re running Unity content in Chrome using just default access and no additional installation or user interaction. It’s kind of wild!”

The technology is being demoed at the Google IO developer event in San Francisco. Unity is also using the event to flaunt its new Unity Android tech, with several Android demos running on different devices.

“Chrome’s market share is already growing like a weed, but it’s innovation like this that will keep driving adoption at a torrid pace,” Seyler added.

“Even cooler still is the fact that all this new technology from Google is open source, so it can readily be adopted by other browsers if they want to. We think they should.”