Quantcast
Minecraft’s Markus Persson Is Playing With Unity For PlayStation Mobile | PSNStores

Minecraft’s Markus Persson Is Playing With Unity For PlayStation Mobile

Posted by on May 20th, 2014 | 0 Comments | Tags: , ,

If you’re unaware of what Unity is, it’s a game development engine that easily allows developers to target multiple platforms at once. While optimization will always be required, the engine can greatly cut back on the time necessary to port a game to other platforms. Up until recently Unity only supported PC and mobile, but now it’s expanded to the traditional platforms, including the entire PlayStation family. This post is only here to show how important Unity support for all PlayStation platforms is, because there’s no game yet.

Over the weekend former Minecraft designer Markus Persson, known online as Notch, posted on Twitter about him discovering Unity export for PS Vita. Within three days he got himself registered as a PlayStation Mobile developer and ported one his projects to the platform:

Earlier I stated that there wasn’t a game, and that’s because Notch later took to Reddit to share some details on the project. Well, details on the background of the project since he won’t share exact info when he’s not convinced it’ll turn into a game. Originally it started out in HTML 5 + WebGL before performance issues forced him to stop. The project was then placed on the back burner before being revived in Unity to target mobile and PC platforms. As the Tweets indicate, he then learned about Unity support for Vita and took to PlayStation Mobile. As of that Reddit post, the project runs “at a solid 60 fps with about 50% free cpu time in a busy test area”. Notch’s only issue appears to be related to registering touch inputs.

If he decides to develop the idea into a game, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come out as a full PSN release instead of PlayStation Mobile, but the importance of Unity support for PSM can’t be understated. PlayStation Mobile is the easiest way to develop games on PlayStation. It doesn’t require you to pay thousands of dollars to buy devkits and licenses. The SDK and Unity support are free. You don’t have to go through extensive concept approvals or back and fourths with publishers and platform holders. Almost anyone (the service isn’t available in all countries) can develop for PlayStation Mobile. As Sony begins to re-position PSM as a means to develop on Vita, it’s an exciting time to be a fan.

Unity for PlayStation Mobile is currently in public beta with an expected launch in the summer. For more information and to sign up, click here.

What about the Vita version of Notch’s other game? 4J Studios recently posted this on Twitter: