Unity Update Includes iPad Support, Powers Several iPad Launch Games

The latest version of Unity Technologies' popular Unity development environment includes Apple iPad support, and the company said today its software is already in use in more than 15 iPad games. All iPhone licenses of Unity, including Unity iPhone Basic and Unity iPhone Advanced, will now support iPad when upgraded to version 1.7 of the engine. Along with that free upgrade comes a software emulator for developers who do not yet own iPad hardware, and tools to allow simplified multiplatform development for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Although Unity says some 15 iPad games currently use Unity, that number is likely to grow quickly; developers have employed the engine for more than 600 iPhone games to date. "Getting Monster Ball onto the iPad was literally just a matter of setting up a few player preference parameters in Unity and hitting build," said Thomas Hentschel Lund, whose port of the PC and iPhone game Monster Ball was built with Unity. "The Unity GUI system already took care of aspect ratio changes, so the iPad port was simple, pain free." Seweryn Panczyniak of Infinite Dreams, which has released three iPad games so far, said his studio was able to use Unity to "get our games submitted and accepted to the iPad App Store without ever seeing hardware."