Unity 6 goes live: Under the hood of the game engine’s latest AI, web and mobile tools

• As Unity 6 arrives, we discuss the latest game engine, the Runtime Fee and more with Unity VP of product Ryan Ellis

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It’s been almost 20 years since the original Unity game engine opened up to developers, kickstarting a mission to democratise game development.

The industry has come a long way since then, from graphical enhancements to the types of games people play, and even the platforms they play on. Naturally, the technology available has evolved too.

Yet, even with so many advancements taking place, it’s been almost a decade since Unity 5 released in 2015, the last numerical upgrade to the game engine before its maker shifted to annual updates – Unity 2017, Unity 2018 and so on.

Now, after nine long years, the old system is back: Unity 6 has finally arrived.

But why is now, 2024, the right time for Unity 6?

Speaking to Unity VP of product Ryan Ellis it quickly becomes apparent that Unity 6 is more than just a new piece of kit: it’s a renewed commitment to developers.

“One of the big things we’ve been trying to do at Unity is to really reconnect with our customers and recommit to them,” says Ellis. “We believe that Unity 6 offers so much of what they’ve been telling us in terms of feedback for quite some time.”

A new Unity?

Unity 6 forms part of the company’s new charm offensive for a company deeply scarred by the infamous Runtime Fee announcement that would charge new and existing users for game installs.

As Unity looked to increase profitability after years of expansion, this attempt received a widespread industry backlash that tarnished its reputation.

Its failure also preceded a company-wide restructure that led to more than 1,800 layoffs at the company – approximately a quarter of its entire workforce – as CEO John Riccitiello departed the company.

One year later, new CEO Matthew Bromberg is at Unity’s helm and he has officially dropped the Runtime Fee following “deep consultation” with the community. The game engine is back to a seat-based subscription model, signalling something of a back-to-basics approach for the company, reinforced by the more traditional Unity 6 branding.

“It will not be making a comeback,” Ellis confirms. “We’re in a bit of a new phase of Unity where we’re trying to be very committed to our customers and trying to help drive their success, to listen to them, to partner with them. The Runtime Fee is not aligned with that. So, we moved away from it, and now we’re really just looking to the future.

“We announced that we were revoking the Runtime Fee after a lot of conversations with our customers, better understanding how they wanted to do business with us in general. The beautiful thing is, we actually got a lot of support from them throughout that process, and a lot of encouragement around the importance of Unity and what we do.”

Shiny new features

Unity 6 has arrived with a host of new features, upgrades and options for devs to leverage, including new AI tool Sprite Enhancer, GPU Resident Drawer, Spatial-Temporal Post-Processing and more.

According to Ellis, Unity 6 is “focused primarily on stability and performance”, levelling up graphical capabilities. GPU Resident Drawer, for example, enables work that previously happened on the CPU to be offloaded onto the GPU, unlocking an immediate performance boost for previously CPU-bound games.

The resultant improvement in-game could be “as much as up to four times in terms of CPU performance” and is enabled by simply ticking a box to turn it on.

“The less our customers have to do in terms of optimisation, the more time they can spend on creativity and making sure they’re delivering the best experiences for their users,” Ellis explains.

Unity 6 also offers “significant improvements” to multiplayer games as demand for them continues to increase.

“Every year, more and more of our creators say they want to deliver multiplayer games, yet doing so can be complicated,” says Ellis.

“Maybe backend server architecture is required, or front networking code. Just like we’re trying to democratise gaming overall, we’re also trying to democratise the ability for people to make multiplayer games.”

While the evolving tech seeks to streamline development, it also aims to enhance in-game stability; the fewer crashes a player experiences, the fewer obstacles there are to enjoying a game and, in theory, the better visibility it receives on storefronts.

“In particular we’ve done some work around ANRs (Application Not Responding) – the sort of crashes that happen on Android,” says Ellis.

“These are important because they really affect developers in terms of how they show up in the Google Play Store. So we did a lot of work around both reducing them and helping to educate our users on why they’re happening, to help avoid them.”

The rise and rise of mobile

Mobile is a key platform for Unity. The company claims it’s used by more than 70% of the top 1,000 mobile games on app stores including Pokémon Go, Royal Match, Call of Duty Mobile and modern-day giant Monopoly Go.

It’s apparent, therefore, why confronting ANRs on Android would be such a high priority in Unity 6. But that’s not all it’s doing for mobile. The new engine has also expanded its learning resource Fantasy Kingdom to mobile in response to community feedback, as users have wanted to better understand how to use various capabilities there.

While Unity is “committed to being cross-platform”, Ellis notes that there’s “a very large community of mobile creators out there”. He also notes the importance for Unity to support users in riding current industry trends – part of that ever-present vision of democratisation.

“We were in a world where everything was PC games or console games, and then suddenly mobile emerged. That completely changed the game,” says Ellis.

“The way in which people are monetising these games keeps changing too, so it’s a very fast-paced and ever-evolving world. One of the things that we try to do is watch those trends, helping to sort of move them and navigate them where we can, but always trying to reduce the friction for our creators to be able to adopt and ride those trends.”

Unity Web plays a big role in Unity 6 too, offering some new advantages for mobile. Web allows players to engage with bite-sized versions of mobile games without installing them onto their devices. This means game makers can put out samples of their games and use Unity Web like another UA wing, drawing downloads from users who may have been reluctant just based on an ad.

Unity also has a partnership with Meta to deliver web games inside of other apps.

“There have been several advancements in web technology overall, and we see our customers and our community really wanting to try to reach their players in more places,” says Ellis.

“I think in general there’s an interest in being able to access players where they are, but it’s become more difficult for many creators to find their audiences and players. We want to be their partner in trying to help them reduce the friction in doing that.”

Innovating with AI

Of course, no modern game engine would be complete without its share of AI tools either. In Unity 6’s case, Ellis is most excited about Sentis, a tool which essentially brings AI in-game as part of the experience.

“For example, you might want to be able to do hand gestures in-game, and for the AI to be able to interpret what those hand gestures are, and have that be part of your gameplay,” he explains.

“Or maybe you could use Sentis to pick up on players’ breath in their microphones, and then have that breath actually show up inside of the game and have an AI interpret that in real-time.”

The tech can also be used for simultaneous translation between players, overcoming the language barrier and making it easier for users to engage with one another.

Another new AI tool is Unity’s Sprite Enhancer, which can turn character designs into pixel form, fill in backgrounds and make minor alterations to sprites while saving developers’ time.

And for more realistic-looking games, Unity showcased its AI capabilities in Time Ghost, a highly detailed, cinematic scene with high-fidelity characters running in real-time. The showcase used features like the Entity Component System, Scenario Blending, APVs, SpeedTree vegetation and Sentis, resulting in a scenario with extreme details like clothes crumpling around a person’s body.

“I’m not a specialist in AI, but I would say I think we’ll continue see new advancements in this technology coming out on a fairly regular basis that will oftentimes be mind-blowing,” states Ellis.

“But where Unity is positioned on this is that AI needs to be in service of creators – helping them to create, not replacing them.

“So much of what AI can do is really powerful and interesting, and yet it often feels like it’s lacking something. It’s lacking that human soul or drive, or whatever it might be that’s behind creativity itself. So, yes, we believe that AI will continue to evolve and change in fascinating ways, but we will always seek to have creators be at the centre of that.”

The customer’s always right

Overall, our conversation with Ellis makes it clear that Unity 6’s core objective is to renew trust in its brand.

A back-to-basics naming convention echoes Unity’s earlier days while implying that, intentionally or otherwise, Unity 6 is the next big step after Unity 5 – so significant that it deserves its own number, not just a release year.

And developers are plainly back in the spotlight at Unity. Ellis says they always have been, but Unity has appeared increasingly interested in other industries in recent years, on a mission to become a platform dealing in digital visions for the manufacturing industry, architecture and more.

Hiring Whitehurst as interim CEO looked to be another move in that direction, underscoring those ambitions with his background being outside the games industry.

Perhaps out of necessity, that focus seems to have shifted back. Current CEO Bromberg has extensive history in games, spanning leadership roles at Zynga and EA.

Meanwhile, Ellis describes games as the “heart and core” of Unity – but it still isn’t leaving other sectors behind.

“This technology has applications outside of gaming as well, so that is still an important part of our business,” he says.

“Customers who aren’t in the gaming space are using Unity in all sorts of fascinating ways like autonomous driving, creating interior experiences inside of cars, creating digital twins of cities, and even applying Unity to healthcare.

“But Unity has always been very focused on gaming. It’s super important to us. I mean, the founders were originally trying to make a game and then generalised it into an engine. Video games are at the heart and core of this company.”