Intel And Unity Have Partnered Up To Add x86 Processor Support To The Unity 3D Game Engine

Today, the CEO of Unity Technology David Helgason announced a collaboration with Intel to add x86 support to the company’s wildly popular Unity 3D game engine. The news was presented during the keynote speech at the Unite 2014 game developers conference alongside announcements for upcoming support of Samsung’s Smart TVs and Google’s Android TV.

Helgason delivered the information pretty quickly, but it’s not the kind of thing that requires a long introduction.

Both Unity 4 and 5 will be updated to include support for Intel Core and Intel Atom-based mobile processors. This will allow developers to build native variants of their games for ARM and x86 targets with very little effort. We’ve reached out for a release timeline and have been told that a beta version of Unity 4 is scheduled for October, and a similar update for Unity 5 is expected in November.

As many readers are probably aware, Intel has been struggling to build market share in the mobile world amidst stiff competition from Qualcomm and nVidia. While the processor maker has been quick to close the performance gap with its competitors, it has had trouble enticing developers to produce high-end games for an architecture that has yet to see massive adoption. A tight relationship with Unity should provide a much needed boost as developers are increasingly turning to game engines for their projects. This might just give Intel enough momentum to break into the flagship market as more top tier games start to roll out with x86 support.

Source: Intel, Marketwired