Unity 6 is set to launch on October 17

Unity has announced that its latest engine, Unity 6, will be available worldwide starting October 17, 2024. This announcement was made during the Unite developer conference held this week.

The upcoming engine is set to include a variety of innovations such as customizable graphics rendering, enhanced multiplayer development capabilities, and tools designed to optimize games for web browsers, including a new WebGPU backend.

Additionally, the engine will incorporate AI tools like Sentis, enabling the use of AI models on any gaming device, and an expansion of the Muse suite offering various AI tools and services.

Unity plans to release Unity 6.1 in April 2025, which will expand upon the "core capabilities" of Unity 6. This update is expected to support foldable and larger screens, introduce deferred rendering through GPU Resident Drawer, and offer new build targets and profiles.

The company emphasized its long-term commitment to supporting the current iteration of its engine but has begun developing the next generation of the engine, which aims to introduce a significant shift in design approach.

This future version is expected to include core enhancements like integrating ECS deeply into the engine, introducing a new content pipeline approach, and upgrading the worldbuilding system based on DOTS, along with enhancements in animation systems and scripting.

The name of this future engine version hasn’t been confirmed yet, and Unity indicated it is still in the early stages of development.

Unity CEO and President Matt Bromberg stated, "Developers have long been asking for more stability and performance, and Unity 6 addresses these needs. We're delivering the most advanced version of Unity, with strong long-term support and dedicated product and engineering support post-launch."

Bromberg added that developers can expect frequent updates introducing new features, performance enhancements, and bug fixes based on developer feedback, ensuring minimal disruption to their ongoing work.

In March 2015, Unity 5 marked a shift to a yearly update schedule, concluding with Unity 5.6. The company has since returned to a focus on major updates.

Following backlash from the developer community, last week Unity retracted its contentious runtime fee. Initially announced in September, the fee faced significant opposition, prompting Unity to eliminate it for games developed under a Unity Personal license.