The game engine company Unity is officially launching the next major version of its engine and tools in just a few weeks. As part of its Unite developer conference, it revealed that Unity 6 will be available worldwide on October 16.
In a press release, Unity stated that Unity 6 will offer developers improvements in graphics and "simplified multiplayer game development." It will also offer improved tools specifically for developers who want to create web browser-based games.
Unity has also announced a launch time frame for the first update for Unity 6. The update, Unity 6.1, will be released in April 2025. It stated:
Unity 6.1 will build on the core Unity 6 capabilities and include new features like support for foldable and larger screen formats, Deferred+ rendering in GPU Resident Drawer, and new build targets and build profiles.
One of the first games that has been confirmed for Unity 6 is Den of Wolves. The co-op sci-fi first-person shooter is being made by 10 Chambers, who used an earlier version of Unity to make its first game, GTFO. Originally, the development team was going to use Unity 2022 LTS to make Den of Wolves. However, they were so impressed with the pre-release version of Unity 6 that they decided to switch engines midway through making the game. You can see a brief tech demo video of the game on YouTube.
The release of Unity 6 will come at a critical time for the company, which is still dealing with the effects of its previous decision a year ago to implement a per-install runtime fee for all games that used its engine. That caused a ton of negative responses from Unity developers, and the company quickly backtracked on most of those changes. Last week, Unity ditched the runtime fee entirely from its plans.