<story><title>Unity merges with IronSource</title><url>https://blog.unity.com/news/welcome-ironsource</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>darzu</author><text>What? The video games is nearly a $200 billion dollar industry[0] and Unity is one if the most popular engines, if not the most. How is that a “mountain with no gold”?&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gamesindustry.biz&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2022-05-05-video-game-market-revenue-forecasted-to-hit-usd200bn-for-2022&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gamesindustry.biz&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2022-05-05-video-game...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>munificent</author><text>I think the key problem is that most game developers are broke and most games are unsuccessful if they even ship.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;picks and shovels&amp;quot; business model where you build tools for customers who use them in their own enterprises can be very successful. But it does require those customers to be successful in their enterprises. (Or you can rely on customers to be willing to pay out of pocket at a loss because it&amp;#x27;s a hobby, as with music instruments.)&lt;p&gt;Without some kind of other monetization, Unity is essentially selling picks and shovels to miners on a mountain with almost no gold in it.&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I don&amp;#x27;t think this justifies what Unity is doing. But they are clearly trying to be a $$$$ business in a $ market, and are willing to sell their souls to get the extra $$$.</text></item><item><author>dgb23</author><text>Unity is arguably the most popular game engine and has a large market place for plugins&amp;#x2F;extensions. It is almost unbelievable that there isn&amp;#x27;t a viable strategy to expand and refine the core product. My intuition here is that the product was taken over by people who wanted fast, huge financial growth, so they invested in what they saw as an opportunity to do just that, while weakening the core product and their image.</text></item><item><author>tomwojcik</author><text>&amp;gt; Unity tried to become not-sure-what but way more than &amp;quot;just a game engine&amp;quot;, and that&amp;#x27;s the problem&lt;p&gt;IIRC most of their revenue comes from Unity Ads, so they&amp;#x27;d be dead if it wasn&amp;#x27;t for this weird pivot. From the business POV, not being &amp;quot;just a game engine&amp;quot; probably saved them.</text></item><item><author>PedroBatista</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s the end of the road for Unity. ( at least what most of us think Unity still is, but it&amp;#x27;s not )&lt;p&gt;The technology was always more or less &amp;quot;fine&amp;quot;. Unreal Engine didn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;kill&amp;quot; Unity and it will not in the future.&lt;p&gt;For the better part of a decade, Unity tried to become not-sure-what but way more than &amp;quot;just a game engine&amp;quot;, and that&amp;#x27;s the problem, I don&amp;#x27;t know exactly what and neither do they.&lt;p&gt;To be clear, Unity is not &amp;quot;dead&amp;quot; and will not be dead for a while, but the writing is on the wall with this &amp;quot;merger&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure how is Boeing and who is McDonnell Douglas but I already wrote the off my mind.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>munificent</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a lot of money in games, yes, but much of that flows into large game studios using their own engines and the production costs are also high.&lt;p&gt;Unity is primarily used by smaller game developers and there is much less money available there.</text></comment>
<story><title>Unity merges with IronSource</title><url>https://blog.unity.com/news/welcome-ironsource</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>darzu</author><text>What? The video games is nearly a $200 billion dollar industry[0] and Unity is one if the most popular engines, if not the most. How is that a “mountain with no gold”?&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gamesindustry.biz&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2022-05-05-video-game-market-revenue-forecasted-to-hit-usd200bn-for-2022&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gamesindustry.biz&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2022-05-05-video-game...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>munificent</author><text>I think the key problem is that most game developers are broke and most games are unsuccessful if they even ship.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;picks and shovels&amp;quot; business model where you build tools for customers who use them in their own enterprises can be very successful. But it does require those customers to be successful in their enterprises. (Or you can rely on customers to be willing to pay out of pocket at a loss because it&amp;#x27;s a hobby, as with music instruments.)&lt;p&gt;Without some kind of other monetization, Unity is essentially selling picks and shovels to miners on a mountain with almost no gold in it.&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I don&amp;#x27;t think this justifies what Unity is doing. But they are clearly trying to be a $$$$ business in a $ market, and are willing to sell their souls to get the extra $$$.</text></item><item><author>dgb23</author><text>Unity is arguably the most popular game engine and has a large market place for plugins&amp;#x2F;extensions. It is almost unbelievable that there isn&amp;#x27;t a viable strategy to expand and refine the core product. My intuition here is that the product was taken over by people who wanted fast, huge financial growth, so they invested in what they saw as an opportunity to do just that, while weakening the core product and their image.</text></item><item><author>tomwojcik</author><text>&amp;gt; Unity tried to become not-sure-what but way more than &amp;quot;just a game engine&amp;quot;, and that&amp;#x27;s the problem&lt;p&gt;IIRC most of their revenue comes from Unity Ads, so they&amp;#x27;d be dead if it wasn&amp;#x27;t for this weird pivot. From the business POV, not being &amp;quot;just a game engine&amp;quot; probably saved them.</text></item><item><author>PedroBatista</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s the end of the road for Unity. ( at least what most of us think Unity still is, but it&amp;#x27;s not )&lt;p&gt;The technology was always more or less &amp;quot;fine&amp;quot;. Unreal Engine didn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;kill&amp;quot; Unity and it will not in the future.&lt;p&gt;For the better part of a decade, Unity tried to become not-sure-what but way more than &amp;quot;just a game engine&amp;quot;, and that&amp;#x27;s the problem, I don&amp;#x27;t know exactly what and neither do they.&lt;p&gt;To be clear, Unity is not &amp;quot;dead&amp;quot; and will not be dead for a while, but the writing is on the wall with this &amp;quot;merger&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure how is Boeing and who is McDonnell Douglas but I already wrote the off my mind.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>foobiekr</author><text>That may be true, but you just need to look at Unity&amp;#x27;s financials to see what fraction of the games market flows to them.  &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;finance.yahoo.com&amp;#x2F;quote&amp;#x2F;U&amp;#x2F;key-statistics?p=U&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;finance.yahoo.com&amp;#x2F;quote&amp;#x2F;U&amp;#x2F;key-statistics?p=U&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not _terrible_ but it&amp;#x27;s not great.</text></comment>