Unity support for Xbox One coming later this year

Unity support for Xbox One will arrive later this year through a collaboration with Microsoft, Unity Technologies CEO David Helgason has said.

Speaking with OXM, Helgason said the company also worked with Microsoft to make the Windows store export free.

Support for Unity will allow developers to easily port their existing Unity games for Xbox 360 and other platforms to the new console.

"Xbox 360 support was something we did on our own to support some of our customers, we came in really late in the cycle, so we kind of knew it wasn't going to be a huge business for us," Helgason said. "Because you know late in a cycle, people will have picked their technologies, built their own, there weren't really a lot of needs.

"So we did because we had customers who wanted to export games and they did that. Here we're coming in really early in the cycle with a lot of support from Microsoft, also the difference is a few years ago we were a small company with a new toolset and now it's a massive community with almost two million people.

"Tens of thousands of games, is our last estimate - on mobile especially, but also elsewhere. And of course you know Microsoft is excited to work with us to bring the best of that community to their ecosystem."

As previously announced, Xbox One can also function as a development kit prior approval sometime after launch.