Bring your Unity game to the Windows Store for free

How do the Unity announcements change the price to publish your Unity app or game? Let’s take a look.

At the recent Build conference and yesterday morning, some big news was announced concerning Unity and Windows. One of the biggest pieces of news is that the pro add in for the Windows Store and Windows Phone will be FREE. Below is a simple table showing the pricing break down for Unity (NOTE: prices are current at the time of posting and are subject to change, for up-to-date information always visit the Unity website)

This table summarizes the cost to download the Unity software itself, and the prices for the add-ins that allow you to publish to different platforms for both the Basic and Pro versions of the software.

Never has it been easier or cheaper to bring your game or interactive application to multiple platforms. This truly is a game changer. You can read the mobile deployment announcement  from Build here and the Unity 4.2 and Windows Phone announcement here.

What about Xbox One & 360?

The partnership announcement also contained some news about Microsoft console support.

• • Unity will support Xbox 360 and Xbox One
  • Xbox One tools will include enhanced Kinect gestures and recognition, multiplayer matchmaking, SmartGlass, and Cloud services.
  • For those who have Microsoft Studios as a publisher, tools for Xbox 360 & One will be available free of charge.

You can read more about these announcement in this press release from Unity.

Unity & Microsoft are also collaborating on a contest for Windows Store & Windows Phone apps

Contest details have not been announced yet, but you can sign up to be notified here, so you can be first to know. What we do know:

• • $100,000 in prizes.
  • Opportunity to become an early publisher.

How do I get started with Unity and publishing from Unity?

To help get you started building or porting your game or application to the Windows platforms using Unity be sure and check out the great videos from the Building Windows Games with Unity conference. You can even check out the session by Canadian company Coding Jar Studios who published their Unity game Fling Theory to the Windows 8 platform.

Speaking of conferences, don’t forget that the Unity conference is being held in Vancouver this year, so if your in the area this is a great chance to take part in workshops, meet other Unity developers, and hear about all things Unity.

If you are publishing your app to the Microsoft platforms, you will need a copy of Visual Studio.

Are you a student?

If you are a student you can get Windows Store and Windows Phone store accounts for free and you can download Visual Studio Professional for free all through DreamSpark, your one stop shop for software.

Are you a startup company?

If you are a start-up company, check to see if you are eligible to join the BizSpark program so you can get Visual Studio Professional for free and free cloud services and storage.

Not a student or a startup?

If you are not a student or startup you can download Visual Studio Express for free when you download the Windows 8 SDK or Windows Phone SDKs.