Microsoft and Unity announced that Microsoft’s Azure had been named the official cloud partner of the Unity game engine.
Game engines like Unity allow for the game and digital experience creators to design and realize 3D environments and assets for games, training tools, and other digital experiences. The Unity engine itself has powered a slew of popular games since its launch in 2005, with some notable recent releases including Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and shining Pearl, Fall Guys, Genshin Impactand many others.
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Now, Unity is hoping to leverage this new, official partnership with Microsoft’s Azure to expand into non-gaming spaces as well. The company hinted at new plans to turn the Unity engine into a “platform-agnostic, cloud-native solution that meets the wide-ranging needs of all developers from enterprise through citizen creators.” It plans to do this by leveraging Azure’s cloud-based systems to provide the real-time 3D (RT3D) simulation tools needed to develop digital twins of real-world places and objects for a variety of training and simulation applications.
The duo believes real-time 3D simulation will become “central to every industry ranging from e-commerce to energy, manufacturing to medical and more.”
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Developers creating games and non-gaming experiences within the Unity engine will now also be able to deploy their creations more quickly and easily to Windows and Xbox devices. Unity and Microsoft plan to make this possible by “leveraging the latest platform innovation from silicon to cloud, and simplifying the publishing experience.”
No timeframe was mentioned for when the first collaborative publishing tools or services might be available.