At the Game Developers Conference, Unity said that developers can expect enhanced performance and stability, expanded platform support, and new AI-powered workflows in the three Unity 6 updates planned for 2025.
The first update Unity 6.1, lands in April. It’s all part of Unity’s effort to be a more reliable partner for game developers, said Matthew Bromberg, CEO of Unity, in an interview with GamesBeat. This is part of the reputational repair that Bromberg has been on since he was named CEO last year.
Bromberg filled a slot vacated by John Riccitiello, who resigned in the fall of 2023 after a pricing debacle that left game developers extremely angry at Unity. The developers calmed down after Unity walked back major parts of the price increase. But Bromberg is still focused on building trust.
With the Unity 6 engine updates, Bromberg said he didn’t want developers to have to choose between stability and new features, or between fidelity and ubiquity. He said Unity remains committed to delivering all of that, and it will launch major updates a few times a year.
Earlier this month, Unity also released its annual Gaming Report, which highlights that developer optimism about AI is growing, with 96% of developers already integrating AI tools into their workflows. The report said game developers are doing more with less, thanks to AI.
At Unity’s headquarters in San Francisco, we talked with Bromberg about the new strategy and his own take on the state of the game industry.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: How is your GDC?
Matt Bromberg: It’s been a great show for us. It’s really energizing to be able to connect with so many customers, all in the same place. It’s a lot of fun. I can’t remember enjoying one of these as much as we have this year.
GamesBeat: You had a significant update this morning.
Bromberg: What’s been fun about this GDC, it’s our first opportunity to roll out the new way we’re going to approach engine updates, in this very clear fashion. Following up 6.0, we’re going to do 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 this year. Especially in 6.1 we’re focused on stability and performance. We’ve made a commitment to focus first on making the engine work better for everyone. That’s what this first release is about, that and making it work on more platforms. The platform expansion is obviously a big part of it for us. Ubiquity is an enormous part of what makes us. Those two things are important.
The third thing is also a commitment we’ve made and that we’re trying to live up to. We’ve changed the way we build releases. We’re doing something we now call production verified releases. It’s two things. One, we’ve done co-development deals with folks where we can really dogfood our own software and be sure that we’re catching issues before they’re in the wild. We have specific partners we’re doing that with. We did one with Kinetic Games and some others. Also, we have relationships with some customers that are not co-development things, but they give us access to their development environment. We’re just there and testing everything we’re doing in production environments. The software just works better.
The most important thing to me was that we begin delivering on the promise that we made to do this. I’m excited about it.
GamesBeat: If there are fixes you have to do that are more of an emergency, do you still do this in between?
Bromberg: Right. We’ll still fix bugs and other things. But the major releases, like most software platforms, will be major releases. There’s much more predictability in terms of what features are coming down the road, and much more stability in between. If we have to fix bugs, we will, but that’s not what a release is. It’s just better. I’m sure there were good reasons for what we were doing, but this should work better.
GamesBeat: How do you feel about different kinds of AI tools, how mature they are and whether they’re going into production?
Bromberg: It’s fascinating. We’ve talked before about–we think that Unity’s great strength is the extensibility of the platform. We’re this assembly point. As always, the strength we have–we’re effectively telling developers to bring whatever tools you want and need onto the platform to do the job. That position works well for the AI future. To your point, there will be all kinds of new tools. But part of what keeps those tools from getting traction in our industry is that they’re not connected to workflows. Real scale developers can’t use them.
We think we have an important role to play in creating that bridge. 6.2 is going to be very much about rolling out the first part of our AI strategy. The first part of that is going to be bringing in select partners, on the generative AI side in particular, and doing bespoke integrations with those partners into Unity, into workflows, so that folks can use them and feel comfortable and confident using them. That’s the first part.
The second part of the release will be bringing agentic behavior into the tool itself, to make it easier and faster to use the tool. Again, that’s an enormous opportunity. Unity is the easiest game engine to use, but it’s still a significantly complex tool. There are highly routinized tasks, things that take time. We can use AI to make that easier. That’s our strategy. We’ll see the beginnings of that in 6.2.
GamesBeat: I’m starting to hear a bit more about vibe programming. Taking humans out of the programming loop and having it done by AI agents. Is that starting to progress or make any kind of–
Bromberg: This is what we believe about the future. The future is a pesky thing. It’s hard to predict. We believe the model will be humans working on platforms that have at their command a series of agents that are vertically focused on the task at hand. You’ll have an agent on physics, an agent on I/O, an agent on sound, an agent on systems. But there will be a group of human beings, just as there is now, using those tools to create the interactive entertainment, which will still require a level of directorial ownership in close control that requires game developers.
I believe that these things will look like tools to the developer. In that sense–it’s a little different than making a website. It’s always been easier to make a website than to make a game. Not everything is the same. I do think that AI tools are going to help significantly, and that developers are going to use them to do scripting and other things over time. But you can’t vibe code your way into World of Warcraft. That’s not a thing. I’d be surprised if it’s ever a thing. That doesn’t mean the tools won’t be enormously impactful.
GamesBeat: There are physical limitations that you can detect.
Bromberg: Building deep systems around interactive experiences is what making games is about. We’re agnostic with respect to where and how 3D objects get created. We’re agnostic as to what tools developers want to bring to bear on the task at hand. We’re an open platform. We’re about orchestrating those tools in the creation of something which is deeply technical and multidisciplinary. Welcoming AI into that process and having it power our tools is an exciting vision of the future.
GamesBeat: You don’t have a lot on the show floor this year.
Bromberg: I’ve always believed–really all shows are opportunities to meet people. I don’t know what Unity has done in the past, but for myself, if you’re here, it’s incredibly efficient to be able to see everyone and touch customers. I don’t know that people need a floor display to know what Unity is at this stage.
GamesBeat: Epic is in the same boat, it looks like. I don’t know what the future of exhibit-oriented shows is going to be like.
Bromberg: It might be different in different industries. I can imagine industries where walking people through demos and things in the moment is more important. In our world–this has been going on for a very long time in our industry. There’s consumer interest in something like that. But we’ve always had this awkward mix, like the old E3. Was it for consumers? Was it for us? What is this thing? For whatever reason, it’s never been exactly figured out by anyone. I don’t know why.
GamesBeat: What do you focus on for this kind of regular announcement cadence? Are there international markets that you care about more?
Bromberg: We have global Unites, basically. I’m going to Korea in April. We’ll do Unite 2025 again in Barcelona. We do them all over the world. But we’re also doing more small-format events. One thing we got away from was this close connection to the community. Small events like Copenhagen, these game developer meetups all over the world. We’re leaning back into that to ensure we don’t lose that connection.
GamesBeat: Where would you say Unity is growing a lot in the world? Where would you say is more of a saturated market?
Bromberg: My view of our industry right now–I’m super bullish and optimistic about it. One reason is this explosion of exciting new platforms that are going to bring a lot of growth. I know there’s been some pain in the industry, but I also see a lot of vibrancy. Instant games are going to make a comeback. I’m hugely optimistic about AR. XR as a whole really, but both the Android platform and Meta’s entrance into this market are going to be really interesting. There’s a lot of growth for us, especially in AR and XR. As those platforms grow in importance in the world, they bring Unity with them. It’s going to be an important part of our business.
I’m a firm believer that we’ll all be walking around with AR glasses in a very short period of time. Not 10 years. A few years. It’s just where the technology wants to go. We’re going to look back on this fishing into our pockets to stare at our phones all the time as this weird interim state. There are a lot of new platforms that are growing for us and that we’re really excited about.
GamesBeat: Do you think it will be AR glasses or AI glasses?
Bromberg: Both. AI-powered AR glasses. You want to see the world and you want to be in the world. But you want that view enhanced and made more intelligent, more interactive. Tools to surround that experience, that seems to me to be the place where we’ll end up.
GamesBeat: How do you feel about where we are in terms of accepting new technologies? Either as consumers or as game developers? It feels like there’s been a lot of rejection of new technologies.
Bromberg: For consumers it has to be the right device at the right time at the right price. It’s difficult to line up all three. We’ve seen great devices that are too expensive. We’ve seen inexpensive devices that arrived at the wrong moment. It’s tough. It’s what makes consumer devices difficult. But when you hit it right, it explodes. I think we’re getting closer with each round of devices. We’re starting to get closer to something, especially in AR and XR. We started with Google Glass. That was a long time ago. We’re finally getting to the combination of form factor, battery life, and AI introducing an easier and more reliable way to interact with something you’re wearing. Those things are going to come together. Consumers will adopt them massively.
In terms of new technologies and us as an industry, in a way the challenge is really for us as tool providers to enable developers to integrate some of these new technologies in ways that work in the practical reality of their workflows. If they don’t, developers will continue to keep them at arm’s length. They don’t reflect the reality of how games are made. That’s why I think we have an important role to play as a bridge to that world, to bring them in. Otherwise it’ll be a long way off. You’re going to see some things from us that will make tha real.
GamesBeat: How has the repricing model worked out?
Bromberg: It’s gone really well. Opening up at the lower tier, so that more folks can use Unity for free, has been well-received by the community. It’s been popular. We’ve raised prices and that’s always difficult, but I hope we’ve done it in a responsible way where we’re delivering value. We’re in a much more constructive place with customers and partners than we were nine months ago, for sure. We’re excited about the future.
Source link