Nintendo licenses Unity Engine for Wii U

Nintendo may be courting independent developers by licensing the Unity Engine for use in both its own Wii U games and those of affiliated developers. Unity CEO David Helgason told Eurogamer that a long-term deal to provide the relatively inexpensive 3D game engine to the console's "entire ecosystem" may be unprecedented.

Helgason said converting the efforts of the more than one million developers registered with Unity to run on Wii U would be relatively trivial. Ensuring games which may have previously used mouse and keyboard or multi-touch play well with the Wii U's GamePad and other considerations would be the main challenge, he said. He did not comment on how the games themselves would be presented or sold.

Nintendo directed any questions on the announcement to Unity.

Taking an engine many independent developers are already comfortable using and integrating it with a major console could provide new creators with a solid avenue into mainstream markets, Helgason said. The open-source Ouya console has a similar goal, promising to make home console development easier by using the widespread Android operating system.

Helgason said that the engine's Wii U "deployment option," with deep technical integration from both companies, will become widely available in 2013. The console itself is set to launch on November 18 in North America, and November 30 in Europe.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.

Latest in Nintendo Switch
Stardew Valley Baldur's Gate 3 mod Baldur's Village
Stardew Valley player bringing a bit of Baldur's Gate 3 to ConcernedApe's farming sim, now with Larian's seal of approval, says they've played over 1,500 hours and will improve the mod
Fortnite Gold Veins
Fortnite Gold Veins: How to mine them for Bars
Key art for Assassin's Creed Rogue Remastered showing Shay Patrick Cormac in a black and red outfit that's a cross between Assassin and Templar armor, with his ship The Morrigan behind him
Assassin's Creed Shadows can wait – I spent 40 hours mopping up the map in the one game in the series everyone skipped
Deltarune
Undertale creator Toby Fox's tomfoolery leaves Deltarune testers thinking an intentional nerf was actually a bug after they "independently" discovered it
Balatro
Balatro creator hits back at AI art spread on the roguelike's subreddit: "I don't use it in my game, I think it does real harm to artists of all kinds"
Balatro Joker card
After stepping away from Balatro for 3 months, the developer only resumed work "because I was bored but the internet was out so I couldn't play Rocket League"
Latest in News
Overwatch 2
My hopes for an Overwatch anime or Diablo horror movie are going strong as Blizzard president points out "we are Blizzard Entertainment, and not simply Blizzard Games"
The New Thunderbolts leaping into action
Marvel's New Thunderbolts* comic steals the MCU's asterisk, and the reason why is just as big of a mystery
Pokemon Go players brace for the worst as Niantic is sold off for $3.5 billion: "This game is entering its death knell"
Stamp PSP
A 16-year-old pitch for a newly discovered first-party PSP game has me mourning the death of PlayStation's Japan Studio all over again
Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3
Baldur's Gate 3 Astarion actor Neil Newbon says he "got rid of" agents who deliberately kept him away from video game gigs: "They just didn't want me to do it"
Mass Effect
Jennifer Hale says she didn't see a single line as Mass Effect's Commander Shepard until it was time to record: "It was all cold reading on the spot"