Unite 2015 Tokyo: New Nintendo 3DS getting Unity support

If you like indie games, you’ve problably heard about Unity: an engine powering an increasing numbers of games (not necessarily from indie developers, though), making porting between platforms relatively easy. The Wii U is one of the platforms the engine is available on (and will soon be getting Unity 5 support), with Nintendo giving away a free licence with every devkit.

A few months ago, Damon Baker (Senior Manager of Marketing at Nintendo of America’s Licensing department) explained that Nintendo was looking into Nintendo 3DS support for the Unity engine, but it turns out it won’t be possible after all. Of course, that’s just for the regular models (3DS, 3DS XL and 2DS), as it was just announced today (during the Unite 2015 Japan event) that the New Nintendo 3DS (XL) would be getting Unity support this year! No reason was given for the lack of support for the original models, but power (and more precisely the CPU) was most likely the issue.

The New Nintendo 3DS getting Unity support is definitely great news for both players and (indie) developers, though it doesn’t necessarily means the New 3DS will be getting truckloads of (indie) games from now on. After all, the New Nintendo 3DS is (significantly) less powerful than the other platforms supported by the Unity engine, which means that developers will have to scale down their games for the handheld. That being said, it’ll certainly make things (much) easier for them!

Source: Unity
Via: 4Gamer.net