Let me get this right...

[ryman]

+$1500 for Unity3d so I have the ability to render to a texture.. which is something I can pull out of my ass quickly in any graphics api.
+$400 to be able to develop on the iphone/ipad
+$1500 if I wish to use render to texture on the iphone / ipad
+$400 to develop on the Android.
+$1500 for render to texture.

Sooo.... I want to develop for the iphone or ipad it's going to cost me $1900+. Let's just say I wasn't going to purchase their Asset Server which adds an additional $500 to the mix. Then if one day I choose to develop for the PC market, it'll be an additional $1500. Give me a break.

I notice a lot of people like to build their MMOs (or at least try to), why wouldn't they license a professional AAA engine like HeroCloud for that price?

Secondly, look at the terrible support for 2D graphics. For this reason you may be better off purchasing SpriteManager 2 for an additional $150.

This entire engine seems like a money sink when compared to engines such as C4, Torque2D and 3D, NeoAxis, UDK, ID Tech 3 (soon to be 4), Esenthel, Cocos2D, Ogre, Truevision3D, Cube 2, XNA framework, modding the Source Engine or CryEngine, etc. which all have much better features. Hell, I'll even go with DarkBasic, RPG Maker, and Game Maker at being better choices. You can argue that it's the toolset that makes Unity worth the price, but honestly I don't see it.

Lastly, I don't understand why some people are saying that Unity is only for small groups of developers while a toolset such as UDK is for professional studios. These two toolsets are there to reduce the time and complexity of your game development cycle, unless you're coding an entire engine from scratch I highly doubt they both are going to be that varied in development time. It all comes down to your game, is it too large and if you have selected the correct engine for the job? No engine is going to create my game content (which is arguably the most time consuming of it all).

I honestly think most of you got ripped. Just saying...

[SpiritWebb]

Just because there are certain features on Unity that are PRO ONLY, isn't fair to give that negative of a response. I use Unity, and Unity is great for making a game. So you have to have PRO for a certain piece, but you know what, you can probably find a piece of coding somewhere that can by pass the pro feature and work on the Indie version. And if there isn't, oh well. Just like using movie textures, is a PRO ONLY feature, but someone out there wrote a piece of coding that will play movie textures on the indie-version. Character Customization is only available on the PRO ONLY because of asset bundles, but someone out there wrote coding to allow the indie-version to do something similar.

Every engine will have its pro's and cons and reasons to purchase theirs. I have tried Torque and UDK and game maker, etc and found Unity to be the best imho.

[Sakar]

Unity is by far one of the best engines I have ever used. Excellent documentation, extremely easy to use, very flexible, and quite powerful. The price for the pro versions may seem quite high, but considering that you get to use an engine like Unity to develop for those platforms more than justifies it IMO. In fact, one of Unity's strong points is that you can develop once, deploy anywhere. Right out of the box you can develop for Windows, Mac, and the Web without having to change a thing in your code. Porting to Android or iOS takes only a little effort. Most other engines require a lot more work to do deploy for mobile platforms, and many don't support web. And while other engines may provide the same features as Unity Pro for a much lower cost, they lack the ease of use and other such benefits you get with Unity.

And for 2D games you have to keep in mind Unity isn't a 2D engine. It's 3D, and as such is designed and optimized for that sort of environment. Also I have very little problem with using Unity for any sort of 2D game. In fact the things one can do with the 3D features of Unity allow very nice 2D games in it.

[hallsofvallhalla]

More and more game companies are going to Unity, you would be floored by how many. Many commercial companies require Unity knowledge. Simple truth is you can go from noob to finished game far faster with unity for free nor royalties than any other engine. Also find me an engine for free ready to develop Iphone or android games with the same features...Unity is priced equal with all the rest on that matter.

Also none of the engines you mentioned have the web deployment and facebook deployment. Those two are a HUGE market.

[Noctrine]

Well at least for non-hobbyists, it's not completely about the cost of the package (though Unity is cheap) It's about the value of our time.

To develop on all the easily accessible platforms (Mac/Win/Android/iPhone) with a pro license will only cost you $2300. Alternatively you can get the pro packages that allow you to do a few extra things (but I haven't found any use for them just yet) for 1500 each. This isn't in addition, the cost of the other package is discounted from it if you purchased it before hand.

If this all seems expensive to you, it is because of the value that you are putting on your time. A fully pimped out Unity License (Not counting the asset server, because I use SVN) It would cost : $4500.00.

That is an impressive body of (relatively) cross platform code for the comparative cost of hiring an entry level programmer for a month. (I actually make more than this before taxes when I chose to do contracting) Not to mention you get all the on-going support fixes for that major version. For many studios (like EA that just purchased a massive site-license not to long ago) that makes it make considerable sense.

Consider, how much would you have to pay a developer that was capable of such work? (Far more than 30/hr)* How long would it take them to make it (Far longer than one month) when you really look at the costs Unity is one of the best gaming packages available at the moment.

And all of this is without Royalties. Which I (might) have to pay depending on the details of my licenses with other engine companies. Also, Torque2D/3D? Even at the new price point from prior experience with TGE (back in the day) I don't know if I would want anything to do with that stuff.

*This is subjective though, in general salary in the games industry is a bit lower than that of general software developers.
--------------

Though I will say, the cost for the caching license is a bit irritating.