A few days ago Unity 3D was made free. You read correctly, as of version 2.6 you don't have to pay a penny if you want to develop with this engine now. Some of you are no doubt scratching your heads so let's get down to what this means...

Normally I'd be a little more sensationalistic in my writing, but this is an extremely important step for Unity and demands to be treated with reverance. This is a great service to the community and, of equal importance, an extremely smart business decision. In the past I've written about how developing standards is important on the web, and the difficulties involved with getting everyone to use a particular 3D plugin. With the authoring environment now being free, the rate of adoption is going to sky rocket, again. The first major increase Unity saw in their sales was when they released a Windows version of the authoring environment (it originally being a mac only program), the company benefited from 100% growth in just a few months. Within 48 hours of Unity 2.6 being announced, 6,500 new developers signed up. Unity 3D know that Google are also developing a 3D plugin (Google O3D). By growing their user base, they have guaranteed an influx of new content in the near future. It means that the rate of plugin adoption is going to soar. They are on the verge of establishing a real standard for 3D content on the web. Something to look forward to, for me, is a further increase in traffic to this site. It'll be interesting to see how this change affects the online community. Rest assured that the age of browser based 3D gaming has arrived.