New Unity price models: Personal, Plus and Pro

[Wikzo]

Unity just announced some new price models. Judging by the comments, it seems like many people are unsatisfied with their new approach. Basically, the "Pro" subscription went from $75/month to $125/month, while a mid-tier "Plus" edition has been introduced for $35/month. However, the Plus edition has many of the same limitations as the free "Personal" edition ($100,000 revenue/funding cap, as well as a "Made with Unity" splash screen logo).

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/05/31/new ... nd-prices/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2736 ... reach_.php

What are the new products and prices?
Unity Personal
Personal stays as it is. Free and fully featured. It’s democratization of development at it’s best. Revenue or funding cap of $100k per year.

Unity Plus – $35/month for a 12 month plan. $49/month, for a monthly plan.
An all-new version of Unity, designed for individuals and teams who want even more useful and effective tools that will help them release commercial games and interactive experiences. Plus comes with the same revenue cap as Personal, $100k per year.

Unity Pro – $125/month with one year commitment, no revenue cap.
The new and improved version of Unity Pro for professional individuals and teams who need complete flexibility for creating commercial games and interactive content.

[egenfeldt]

Most interesting upgrade for $125 is the addition source code and premium support - I hadn't see that coming. That is a pretty big thing to add I would say although not sure exactly what it entails. But the model does look a bit strange - interesting to hear what thoughts lies behind. I would advise/expect that the move the revenue limitation on Plus a bit up.

[Pegepinden]

Hmm not really sure what i think about it. Do not think the 35$ pack is that interesting.

[khornel]

Most interesting upgrade for $125 is the addition source code and premium support - I hadn't see that coming. That is a pretty big thing to add I would say although not sure exactly what it entails. But the model does look a bit strange - interesting to hear what thoughts lies behind. I would advise/expect that the move the revenue limitation on Plus a bit up.

This is has been in the pro tier for about a year, I believe. I think "$" means it'll be out of reach for most people in any case.

[Henrik LSP]

Hmm not really sure what i think about it. Do not think the 35$ pack is that interesting.

Agreed. I don't see any must-have features in the Plus subscription.
- Unity Cloud Build Priority Queue: seems very important if you have a large team running Continuous Integration. Otherwise not.
- Unity Plus Analytics: I don't think I would pay 35 dollars a month for a few extra analytics features. Analytics can be critical to a company. But they will probably put the really good analytics features in the Pro subscription.
- Pro Editor UI: Not worth anything.
- Performance Reporting: probably a must-have for many mature companies. But I am guessing that most of those will have already hit the revenue cap and will want a Pro subscription.
- Flexible Seat Management: Can someone tell me what this is? Is this the killer feature that we should buy Unity Plus for?
- Asset Store packs: Nice but not essential.
- Unity certification courseware: If a Plus subscription is a necessary part of getting a Unity certification then this might be what people would buy the subscription for.

The greatly increased cost of the Pro licence is definitely bad news. All in all, the new price models do not seem to give us more for our money.

[jonaz.dk]

Yeah it seems the Plus version is not really worth it. I guess 'maybe', depending on circumstances for some.
Free is a very nice deal!

The interesting question is how many current $75 Pro users they will move to Free. While the more profitable game studios. Of which there are most certainly fewer of, will stay with the new $125 Pro.
My gut feeling is that quite a lot of people will settle with Free. So Unity's overall sales might go down?
Naturally Unity is run by a lot of very talented and clever people. And I'm sure they have done their estimates very well to increase sales.
Maybe they'll throw some more incentives for the Plus subscription in the near future?
Will be interesting to follow!

Also this is interesting!

"With this in mind, we want to be clear. There will be no major Unity 6 release."
---
With our switch to subscription we can make Unity incrementally better, every week. When a feature is complete, we will ship it. If it is not ready we will wait for the next point release.


Pay to own!
Along with the new subscription model, we are introducing “pay to own”. After having paid for 24 months of subscription, you can stop paying and keep on using the version you have at that point. Of course, you would also stop getting new features, services or fixes; choice is yours.

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/06/05/subscription-why/

[Henrik LSP]

"With this in mind, we want to be clear. There will be no major Unity 6 release."
---
With our switch to subscription we can make Unity incrementally better, every week. When a feature is complete, we will ship it. If it is not ready we will wait for the next point release.

Also known as "Continuous Delivery". Impressive. It takes some really professional and disciplined developers to get that to work.

[vonknut]

As far as I know, so far you have paid 75$ per month for the pro + 75$ per month for IOS + Android pro license (=150$).
So if it indeed is 125$ for "all platforms" then the price actuallly have gone down?

[jonaz.dk]

Very good point for mobile devs with Pro Droid/iOS! ($75+$75+$75=$225)

In a classical mobile scenario Android Pro + iOS Pro
Old minimum, per year locked, for Pro (75+75+75)*12= $2700.
New minimum, per year locked, Pro price 125*12= $1500

It's a sweet new deal for Pro in that segment.
No idea how many people with Unity Pro also has the Pro mobile exporters.
Mobile in general being the bulk of Unitys dev base to my knowledge. Might cost Unity some if the downgrade/upgrade ratio is not in their favor?

Still interesting if the new Pro package will be attractive enough for microstudios under the $100.000 limit to upgrade to. Free has been beefed up.
Though people should NOT underestimate the attractiveness of the dark UI alone. Does come with Plus!

Anyways more people on free with Unity experience and workflow dependencies should be good for Unity in the long run.

The engine war continues!

[vonknut]

Actually its 150$ for pro + ios AND android pro.
-not 225, sorry, my phrasing was not precise.

So the discount is lower thatn you calculated.
But still 25$ dollar a month


-regards, Hans

[jonaz.dk]

I'm confused?!
https://store.unity3d.com/subscribe

"A subscription to Unity Pro costs $75/month. A Unity Pro iOS OR Android add-on costs $75/month/add-on."

[Niels Jørgensen]

It's $225. That's what my bank statement says, anyway...

[jonaz.dk]

haha nice! In reference to a slightly older statement of mine

Tweaks on Unity Plus incoming!

So with this goal in mind we are going to make these changes to what we announced previously:

We’re making the Unity splash screen in Unity Plus optional, like it is in Unity Pro.
We’re raising the revenue cap in Unity Plus from $100k to $200k so that more of you are able to take advantage of it.

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/06/16/evo ... d-pricing/

Sounds like nice tweaks.

[Niels Jørgensen]

Takes care of the only two reasons I'm on PRO, so I'll be switching as soon as they'll let me.

Funny how $35 can seem like a bargain until I remember that it's still about 10 times more for Unity each month than Soak makes... In about six...