Unity sets sights on triple-A

Unity has reaffirmed its dedication to triple-A game development with new features and a significant recruitment drive.

Speaking on stage during the first main day of the company’s user conference, Unity co-founder and CEO David Helgason confirmed that through many of the features set to be released as part of the 3.5 update, the company plans to establish Unity 3D as an engine used for triple-A products.

Highlighting both the well publicised Madfinger project Shadowgun and the newly revealed Luma Arcade developed game Bladeslinger as early examples of the potential of Unity as a triple-A engine, Helgason confirmed a specific recruitment drive for the new initiative was well underway.

"We call this our triple-A initiative. It was turning out that people were wanting more. They wanted to push the technology harder, and they wanted to work in bigger teams. It turned out that Unity had fallen short with some things, but we realised around a year ago that we do have the energy to go and fix this," said Helgason of the realisation that Unity was of interest to triple-A teams. "We started to recruit like crazy, and started to recruite the guys working on some of the leading triple-A engines of today."

While Unity has talked of the engine’s triple-A potential previously, Unite 11 marks the company’s fiercest statement of intent yet with regard to joing the giants of triple-A engine development.

Key 3.5 features of partiular relevance to those interested in using Unity to craft triple-A games include the company’s first AI and pathfinding solutions, the new social APIs, and the in-editor analytics tools.

Luma Arcade’s Unity-authored western Bladeslinger was revealed today as part of the opening session of the Unite 11 event.

Unity 3.5 will be made available in late 2011.