Corona vs Unity?

Games
#1

I’m sure the Corona guys likely heard of this already but Unity announced today that they’re making their $800 (iOS/Android publishing) platform free.

As someone that has been using Corona for about a year now making my first game, I chose Corona mostly because it was cheaper to publish for iOS/Android than Unity. 

Now however Unity is free and can publish to more platforms than Corona can. I (and likely numerous other game devs) are/will seriously consider dropping Corona.

Does Corona have any plans to counter this or have any comments on this huge move by one of your biggest competitors? If you can’t announce anything now please at least consider it as I think this could have a big impact on the Corona community.

#2

Being a 3D designer by trade I have often played with the idea of going with unity and learning it, but have been put off by the price a bit before. Especially the pro, which is still expensive. But this move to make it free for mobile, even though its just the standard version, makes me take another look at it. Though I don’t think I will move over for a long while still. But I will start learning working with it, definitely. But I think that for a lot of things corona will still be better. Plus after using it for 2 years now Im starting to get the hang of it, hehe. 

But Unity is a very interesting and exciting platform, people are making amazing stuff on it and it has a large community. I also want to try and use it at work, which is doing 3D architect visualisation. Think there is a lot of exciting things to do there, especially after seeing the occulus rift and what people are doing with that :smiley:

#3

Hey guys - we did indeed see the Unity announcement and we are glad they have decided to follow our lead in making mobile development more accessible :slight_smile:

As I’ve said many times before, Unity is a great tool. But we think Corona is very well differentiated:

First of all, our free tier does not have a splashscreen. We believe that most serious developers will not want a platform splashscreen on their games/apps.

But most importantly, Unity is great for 3D, and all the things 3D implies - bigger budgets, more technical complexity, bigger teams.

Corona is great for 2D, whether it’s games, ebooks, utilities or business apps. If it’s 2D you will build things more quickly, more efficiently and with better results in Corona.

At the end of the day, different tools are good for different projects. Corona is the best choice for 2D apps and games and we will continue increasing this advantage.

#4

Unity has announced they are making a 100% 2d solution as well. Also there are very successful plugins to help 2d development. Example http://www.asteroidbase.com/dangerous-spacetime/. Will Corona do anything new to compete with this? 

I agree the custom splash screen is great with corna free, but unity free allows you to have IAP. I think all developers would much rather have IAP over a custom splash screen.

The Unity splash screen is not exactly a problem for indie studios. As you’ve stated Unity seems to bring to mind big budgets which may have a social proof effect to counter act the lack of customization.

#5

As joshua mentioned, there seems to be a few 2D frameworks for Unity that look pretty good (“Futile” for example).

Also, another big reason I’m inclined to switch at this time is because of the Win/Mac/Linux publishing options. Corona made an announcement of sorts about a year ago saying native Win/Mac publishing was in the works and even had a Youtube video demo but that seems to have been abandoned?

#6

Hi Joshua,

Just a quick question: which part of Unity allows for free IAP? I only see some 3rd-party add-ons in the Unity Asset Store, with just one solidly-rated for iOS, and one for Android which reports compatibility with Unity 3.x (but perhaps not 4.x). Perhaps I’m mistaken on this… please correct me if so.

In terms of what Corona is doing, going forward: in addition to the plugin system announced today (http://www.coronalabs.com/blog/2013/05/21/corona-weekly-update-new-plugin-partners-core-gets-lighter/), probably the most exciting thing is Graphics 2.0, which will bring Corona into the Open GL 2.0 ES world. This will offer 2.5D effects and act as a “bridge” between true 3D and traditional 2D. It will offer some great “3D-like” abilities without the sheer complexity of 3D modeling… and following in line with one of the core beliefs of Corona SDK since the very beginning, we’ll make these things as easy to implement as possible. :slight_smile:

Best regards,

Brent

#7

If you really wanted Corona Starter to match up with Unity Free you would make the 2.5D effects available to Corona Starter HINT HINT COUGH COUGH. 

#8

This will be interesting. When unity comes out with their 2d solution I think corona might regret the new pricing.

#9

[quote name=“Brent Sorrentino” post=“182758” timestamp=“1369172471”]Hi Joshua,   Just a quick question: which part of Unity allows for free IAP? I only see some 3rd-party add-ons in the Unity Asset Store, with just one solidly-rated for iOS, and one for Android which reports compatibility with Unity 3.x (but perhaps not 4.x). Perhaps I’m mistaken on this… please correct me if so.  [/quote] There are 3rd party IAP packages in unity that make it easier for you as far as doing some of the coding for you, but there is nothing to prevent you from doing the IAP yourself.

#10

Hey guys - I’ll just chime in quickly again on this.

I think it comes down to this: if you don’t think you will develop more quickly with Corona, then you absolutely should consider Unity. But if we (Corona Labs) do our job, then you will  develop more quickly in Corona (assuming you are doing 2D  - we clearly are not targeting 3D). And we believe this is very true today and will be even more so in the future.

Also, if it is imperative for you to be on other platforms today besides iOS and Android (where we believe 99% of the action is), then you should also consider other platforms. For now, we are keeping our focus on iOS and Android and we will cover other platforms when the investment makes sense. The reality is that no company can cover all computing platforms at a very high quality level, and we are choosing to focus our resources.

#11

I think the concern some of us might share is with a subscription based licensing, time (and money) is against us.

#12

Falcon777 - on the topic of subscription vs a one-time fee, just keep in mind that if you buy Unity today, it is likely you will want to upgrade to the next version (at another 50% of the original cost) in 18-24 months (perhaps less if we are closer to the new release). You may think you won’t upgrade, but mobile is moving so quickly, it is very likely you will need to upgrade.

So if you compare our subscriptions (Pro or Enterprise, which are significantly cheaper) to Unity Pro, the cost of Corona is definitely lower.

Again, Unity is a great tool and is not a bad choice. I just want to make sure people understand the differences.

#13

If development time is a concern, I can’t see how anyone would choose Unity over Corona for 2D game dev. I’ve played around with Unity multiple times over the years and in the amount of time it will take you to get comfortable with just the Unity interface, you can have a simple game DONE with Corona SDK. (Personal opinion, not scientific fact.)

If you have any kind of programming experience, even just Javascript or some PHP, you can learn enough Corona/Lua in about an hour to create a simple game. I’ve heard that from *dozens* of people who have taken my 1-hour crash course. (Which is now available on this site in the Resources area.)

 Jay

#14

By the way, the posts as “davidstarter” is from me (David Rangel, Corona staff). I am logged in as a “starter” user just for separate testing purposes. Sorry about that.

#15

Honestly, is it anyones goal to make a “simple” game in 1 hour? Such a simple game won’t even be approved on the iOS app store, nor make any money. Also if you know Javascript you can just start coding in unity right away. 

I think the vast majority of us are concerned with making medium, to high end games.  Is there a development time boost to games that aren’t endless runners, or angry birds alternatives? 

#16

Yeah this is interesting news and Unity is something i might play around with later. For me personally, because my focus is on 2D games and apps, Corona is my choice of framework but should i ever try a 3D game i think i will use Unity.

Cheers

#17

I was just reading the responses to the unity announcement on unity’s site and here was one of the responses:

Thank you so much Unity! I was recently looking to choose between Unity and Corona for my game development needs but was going to go with Corona yesterday because it was a few hundred cheaper.

Now I’m switching focus all to Unity and will get started with it ASAP! Thanks for making this happen!

#18

Bummer :slight_smile: Looks like “JD” will spend more time developing his apps :wink:

#19

Don’t get me wrong, I think corona is a great 2d mobile product and right now it its much better at 2d than unity. I’m just curious to see if unity will soon put in a competitive 2d system, and if they do, what will it mean for corona?

#20

Hi Paul,

I view it as “wait and see” at this point… i.e., when they release this 2D framework, how it works, and how it will be priced (meaning, for clarification, Unity iOS “free” does not offer all of the features as Unity iOS Pro, and I assume their 2D platform would follow suit, similar to free Corona Starter vs. Corona Pro).

If they do this, I imagine some people will use it, and some will switch from Corona to that… it’s an inevitable part of this business and always has been. However, I don’t believe that most developers who have used Corona for some time, learned it, improved their skills, and increased their time-to-production would switch the Unity 2D simply because it has the “Unity” stamp on it. A crucial point for the “time=money” developer is that doing so would require them to potentially learn an entirely new language, adapt to a possibly more-complex working environment, learn entirely new APIs and methods, etc… so there would need to be a compelling reason to switch. At this point, nobody really knows what that might be and only time will tell.

Brent