Unity, renowned as the leading platform for developing and expanding interactive experiences and games, has officially confirmed that Unity 6 will be released globally on 17 October 2024. This significant announcement was made at the company’s annual “Unite” developer conference. Unity 6 is set to be the most robust and high-performance version of the platform, with a variety of new tools and improvements tailored for developers.
Enhanced Features for Developers
Unity 6 is designed to offer a suite of key improvements aimed at enhancing the developer experience. Among its features is a highly customisable graphics rendering system, which will give developers more control over their visual designs. The new release also simplifies multiplayer game development, streamlining the entire game creation process. Furthermore, it introduces powerful tools for building optimised games that can perform efficiently on web browsers.
Matt Bromberg, Unity’s CEO and President, expressed his excitement about the release: “Developers have long asked for increased stability and performance, and Unity 6 delivers just that. This release is our most advanced yet, supported by extended long-term support and dedicated product and engineering teams to ensure continuous improvements. Developers can also expect regular updates with new features, performance enhancements, and bug fixes, all with minimal disruption to their ongoing projects. We’re thrilled to showcase these innovations at this year’s Unite event, especially as developers are already leveraging Unity 6 to create remarkable games.”
Developers Already Benefiting from Unity 6
10 Chambers, the development team behind GTFO, was among the first to adopt Unity 6 following its preview release earlier this year. They will showcase an exclusive new environment from their eagerly awaited title, Den of Wolves, at the Unite conference. The game has been enhanced using the advanced graphical features provided by Unity 6.
At first, we developed Den of Wolves using Unity 2022 LTS, but upon seeing the significant improvements in Unity 6, especially regarding performance and rendering. Our team opted to transition mid-development, stated Svante Vinternatt, Co-Founder and COO of 10 Chambers. We required a rendering system that was both adaptable and efficient, enabling us to iterate quickly and scale effectively without sacrificing quality. Unity 6 has truly met those needs.
What Lies Ahead for Unity
Unity also revealed that the first update in the Unity 6 series, Unity 6.1, is expected to launch in April 2025. This update will expand on the foundational capabilities of Unity 6 and introduce new features, including support for foldable and large screen devices, Deferred+ rendering in GPU Resident Drawer, and additional build targets and profiles.
Unity’s in-house demo team will also be presenting Time Ghost, a new demo that demonstrates the range of realistic environments developers can create with Unity 6. This demo showcases Unity 6’s Entity Component System (ECS), Adaptive Probe Volumes, and advanced vegetation rendering using SpeedTree. Alongside the release of Unity 6, developers will also be able to download two scenes from Time Ghost, highlighting its environmental ECS and cloth deformation technology powered by Unity Sentis.
Additionally, the Fantasy Kingdom demo, originally built with Unity 6, has now been optimised for mobile devices using the Universal Render Pipeline (URP). The project and its assets will be available for non-commercial use on the Unity Asset Store once Unity 6 becomes publicly available next month.
Partnerships and Awards
Unity also spotlighted its collaboration with Google Cloud, which is aiding game developers in building scalable live service games. With the addition of generative AI, Google Cloud enables developers to create adaptive virtual worlds that evolve in response to player interactions.
Lastly, the nominees for the 16th Annual Unity Awards have been revealed. Voting is open until 4 October 2024, with winners set to be revealed during a virtual showcase on Unity’s Twitch channel on 23 October 2024, at 7 pm CET.
Unite 2024 Developer Conference
This year’s Unite conference is expected to attract over 2,000 developers, offering them the opportunity to attend technical sessions, network, and participate in interactive discussions with Unity’s leadership team. All the technical sessions will be recorded and shared with the wider Unity development community in the coming weeks.
