For hardcore gamers and newbies alike, this should sound like music to the ears. Facebook has teamed up with Unity to build what is being dubbed as 'the black hole of Internet gaming'. This is Facebook's second big bet on gaming since it launched the Facebook Games Arcade beta for Microsoft Windows, earlier this year.
Facebook teams up with game developer Unity
Facebook is building a new PC gaming platform with Unity Technologies, an industry leader in 2-D, 3-D, virtual reality and augmented reality games. Facebook announced its partnership to the dismay of STEAM top brass, who are in for a bumpy ride.
Facebookexpects to compensate losses suffered from mobile gaming phenomenon
While Facebook , the hub of social gaming, made $257 million in payment taxes in Q4 2014, this figure slipped to a $197 million last quarter. This is seen as a result of gamers shifting to mobile app stores instead. Concentrating on the 650 million users who play Facebook games and to attract gamers currently connected to other gaming communities, Facebook has paid over $8 billion to game developers since 2010.
The much awaited platform that is in the making would be able to better utilize hardware resources and enable support for more hardcore games, making Facebook a strong contender to look out for in the gaming world.
This will put the social media platform in direct competition with the already established Steam.
Unity to export its development tools to Facebook
So as the rumors go, a shiny armor of game development toolsis the latest export to Facebook's functionality and will be integrated into version 5.4 of the Unity's game engine. The two companies also announced that access to the alpha would be available to a closed group of developers.
What can be expected from Facebook's new gaming platform?
The move will integrate and improve the support available for Facebook’s current gaming platform. For Unity thisis seen as a smart move since this enables the developers to quickly export and publish games to Facebook.
Hopefully, more fun is on the way as Facebook looks forward to extending the horizon of its gaming world.
When up and running the platform will be used to find and play latest downloadable games on PC without distractions like 'News Feed'.
So, while this is not the first time for Facebookto reveal its intentions to enter into the PC gaming world, the new gaming platform is looking to make things considerably easier for game publishers. They could now be offering a large number of mobile games from Android and iOS platforms to Facebook’s galaxy of gamers, who are estimated to be more than 650 million.
Until now, it has been a difficult task for Unitygame developers to export Unity games to Facebook’s web gaming platform owing to a more code-intensive FacebookSDK. This was revealed when Facebookpartnered withUnityto support Oculus VR game development. Now, that they have made the process more simple and streamlined than before, this could actually create a black hole for Internet gaming.
