Original author: Chenglin Pua (Malaysia)

Recently, many companies that have announced their entry into the metaverse, such as Meta, Roblox, Apple, Microsoft, Google, including domestic Tencent, NetEase, etc., all want to become developers of the new world. And Unity is the "infrastructure company" that provides them with infrastructure and tools. Just like today's graphic design is inseparable from Adobe's Photoshop, Unity hopes to become Adobe in the 3D Internet era.

Unity Software Inc. is an American video game software development company based in San Francisco, founded in Denmark in 2004. Unity Technologies is best known for developing Unity, a licensed game engine used to create video games and other applications.

Unity's business is divided into operational solutions (including Unity Ads, Unity In-App Purchases and other tools), creation solutions (including Unity Engine subscriptions and other professional services), and strategic partnerships.

The Unity engine platform is primarily used to create 2D, 3D, virtual reality, and augmented reality video games and other simulations. The engine was originally introduced in 2005 for creating video games. As of 2018, the platform has been used to create approximately half of mobile games and 60% of AR and VR content on the market, including approximately 90% of emerging AR platforms such as Microsoft HoloLens, and 90% of Samsung Gear VR content percentage. The Unity engine technology is the foundation of most virtual and augmented reality experiences, and Fortune magazine said that Unity "dominates the virtual reality business." Beginning in 2017, Unity Technologies applied its game engine to other industries, including the film and automotive industries.

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Unity stock price trend

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Source: Market Screener, 01 Blockchain based on public information

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Source: Innovecs Games website

Unity Technologies currently operates in 25 countries, has a 45% market share of the full-featured game engine market, and has 4.5 million registered developers under its platform.

In December 2020, Unity announced the acquisition of MLAPI, a multiplayer network framework, and RestAR, a computer vision and deep learning company. In June 2021, it acquired Pixyz Software, a developer of 3D data optimization technology. The company announced plans to acquire desktop streaming software Parsec for $320 million in August 2021.

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Focus on building the Unity of the metaverse infrastructure

Unity was originally just a game development engine, and later gradually developed into a platform for developing and operating interactive real-time 3D content, not only for game production, but also for film, design, manufacturing, construction and other industries.

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Meet 3D content development and improve efficiency

With the rise of the metaverse concept and related attention, the market gradually creates virtual worlds and economies that correspond to reality. The introduction of real-time 3D technology will change the way people interact with digital content and entertainment, and more and more content will be 3D, real-time, and interactive. In the future, real-time 3D will replace linear and flat 2D digital content.

Unity believes that the metaverse will unleash large-scale demand for real-time 3D content. As long as there is content and interaction, 3D will definitely replace 2D. In the 3D field, Unity is one of the lightest, interactive, and best-performing platforms for multi-terminal content realization. Its strong cross-platform capabilities basically cover all platforms, which will make Unity the preferred creation tool for metaverse creators and producers. one. According to Unity CEO John Riccitiello's speech on the TechCrunch forum, half of the current games on all platforms in the world are created with Unity.

Nowadays, people have different opinions or imaginations about the metaverse, but the metaverse must be the era of real-time rendering. People used the same technology in the construction process of Yuanyu, and the metaverse needs real-time rendering. In the era of real-time rendering, the Unity engine can participate in the construction of the Metaverse.

In order to truly realize the Metaverse in the future, it is necessary not only to provide an immersive experience, but also to ensure that users and developers can obtain these experiences with low latency. In addition, how developers can build these experiences more quickly is also very important. The Metaverse must be built on an advanced digital infrastructure, which is also the purpose of Unity launching cloud services, hoping to become the most suitable foundation for the Metaverse network.

To this end, in September this year, Unity Cloud Services launched an Enlighten-based cloud baking solution and a cloud distributed resource import and packaging solution. This solution can achieve high concurrency of hundreds of computing resources, support dynamic expansion, and help creators Greatly improve development efficiency and project iteration efficiency.

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Acquired film special effects company to enhance special effects development tools

On November 10, 2021, Unity officially acquired the visual effects company Weta Digital. Weta Digital was founded by Peter Jackson, the director of the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, and its main field is the production of digital special effects. Unity stated that the ultimate goal of this acquisition is to put Weta Digital's many advanced visual effects tools into the hands of millions of creators and artists around the world. When integrated into the Unity platform, these tools will greatly help realize a new generation of real-time 3D creative content and shape the future of the Metaverse.

The CEO of Unity mentioned in the conference call that this acquisition will incorporate first-class art tools into the Unity platform, improve the tool modules of the Unity development platform, and expand the user base. It is estimated that this acquisition has added a potential market of 10 billion to Unity . In the future, these world-class artist tools will be available to creators through an easy-to-use cloud-based workflow, and together with Unity's deep expertise in real-time, they will help them realize brilliant ideas.

Unity and Weta Digital will provide advanced content creation tools and a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription model to a growing number of game developers, artists and potentially millions of creators. By moving these high-fidelity tools and assets to the cloud, Unity and Weta Digital will open new opportunities for creators to take advantage of exceptionally powerful art tools, procedurally Modules and extensible content. Creators will have the ability to perfect the process and simplify production, achieve perfect and stable predictable results, and finally successfully build their own world in the metaverse.

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Using AI to Lower the Barriers to Development

In 2020, Unity launched MARS, which stands for Mixed and Augmented Reality Studio (Mixed and Augmented Reality Studio). According to Unity, MARS is currently the most powerful development tool on the market, allowing professional or non-professional users to create XR experiences, allowing applications to truly respond intelligently to real-world environments.

Unity released the smart assistant application of MARS at WWDC 2021, which supports developers to create 3D in any place and on any AR device without a complete project file and Unity editor.

Danny Lange, Unity's senior vice president of artificial intelligence and machine learning, said: "Our work has a long way to go, but we can learn from the experience of the Internet-the pervasiveness of technology is very important for its full application. The development and use of the engine must It is very easy, the production of content and experience must be very convenient, and the business model based on it must be able to support people's lives. I think Unity's positioning is very unique, it is reflected in our market image, in our understanding of games, especially The leadership role of a small independent studio is reflected in our compatibility with more than 20 platforms. We will continue to be consistent in application development and metaverse, this is our DNA, flowing in Unity blood."

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Application of Unity in autonomous driving test

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Source: Unity official website

After the developer builds the scenario, the autonomous driving simulation test can be visualized in Unity as a runtime. According to the official website of Unity, using Unity as a visual front-end for autonomous driving simulation tests has brought many benefits to autonomous driving developers. In real-time 3D, developers have complete control over the interaction with the digital environment.

Developers can modify the perspective of vehicles or other objects in the virtual scene and get feedback in real time. It can not only zoom in the camera for a close view, but also zoom out for a macro view, and intuitively understand everything that is happening in the simulated scene. Autonomous driving developers can use Unity to try and simulate every aspect of a scenario. For example, the vehicle is surrounded by unknown objects to test whether the automatic driving function can operate correctly in a mixed situation of known and unknown data.

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Unity Performance

Unity reports third-quarter earnings on November 10, 2021. Its revenue rose 43% YoY to $286.3 million, beating market expectations by nearly $20 million. Its adjusted net loss widened to $14.8 million, or $0.06 a share, from $13 million, also beating estimates by a penny a share. Unity expects its full-year revenue to grow 40%, compared with its previous forecast of 35% to 37%. The acquisition of Weta Digital will close in the fourth quarter.

The specific revenue business is Create Solutions and Operate Solutions, with revenues of US$83.7 million and US$185.0 million, respectively, an increase of 34% and 54% over the third quarter of 2020. Strategic Partnerships and Other revenue was $17.6 million, a decrease of 3% from the third quarter of 2020.

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Source: Unity Financial Report