Unity CEO on the origins of the Wii U deal, engine will be used by first/third-party studios, more
Unity CEO David Helgaso has sounded off with a few comments about its Wii U deal with Nintendo.
Helgaso first addressed the origins of the deal, noting that the company originally pitched the idea when the engine wasn’t widely-used.
“It’s actually been a dream of ours to be the default development kit for something you can access if you’re just building games for a particular console. I remember we pitched the idea to at last Nintendo, but also Sony maybe five years ago, but of course back then we were a tiny company, and we didn’t have a lot of users.
“So, it was understandable that they didn’t bite back then, although I think they should have, because the tools were really good back then, but they weren’t yet proven. We didn’t have 1.2 million registered users, or 200,000 monthly users back then – we probably had closer to 200.
“Our prowess grew very quickly thanks to the explosion of mobile, and that helped us grow our user base and improve our tools. I can’t describe the exact steps we took with Nintendo, but we were in touch with them, and in the end they may have even come to us. I can’t remember the exact steps.”
Helgaso said that the hiring of ex-Sega of America CEO Shinobu Toyoda may have contributed to Nintendo’s interest in Unity:
“We were over in Japan last year with our really good tech people who are famous in the Japanese industry, such as Shinobu Toyoda, who was the American CEO of Sega. He is very well connected. So we led the charge on this partnership – we were excited about it, as were Nintendo.
“From then on we negotiated a bunch of stuff, like who would do what and when. I think it’s interesting because we’re still working on tools that mean you can take a version of Unity and export it to the Wii U. It’s not done yet, but we know it’s going to get done soon.”
Helgason also explained the manner in which Nintendo will use Unity, and revealed that the company plans on rolling the engine out to all of its first and third-party studios to create a standard of cost-effective, powerful development.
According to Helgaso, Nintendo will “bring it to their big ecosystem of studios.” Unity will be available for first and third-party studios.
“It’s going well and we’re firing along with the project. Once that’s done, two things will happen, and these are separate things, but I think they are connected and they will work really well together.
“One thing is that Nintendo will take Unity tools that we give them, and bring it to their big ecosystem of studios. Nintendo has first-party, third-party and all of the other studios that they’ve worked with for years, and they know them well.
“They trust them because they know how to make awesome games for Nintendo platforms. Historically, none of these companies were using Unity, and they have the same challenges as everybody else – cost effective development and all that stuff.
“So Nintendo is bringing Unity to these studios so they can build with it. The second thing that will happen is that, we turn around with the same tools and technology we’re working on, and take them to our community, which is a different one.”
“Nintendo’s community is very formidable and respected, they’ve been around for a long time. We turn to our community which is new, very energetic – of course we have old studios, but there are a lot of young ones too – and many of them have built games for consoles before.
“But many more have never built console games, or published on any console. What is exciting there is that are many studios out there that make hit games on iOS, Android or Steam, but hopefully many of these studios will be able to bring their games to Wii U, and that’s just really exciting.”
Finally, Helgason feels that Unity could be a big factor when it comes to third-party interest in Wii U. Many developers use the engine these days, so having the technology ready for outside developers could create a more positive relationship with other studios.
“If the Wii U is – and we hope it will be – a big success, then that will be a big deal for a lot of those developers.”
