Unity on managing perceptions and cloudless generative AI

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Unity last month released its 2023 Gaming Report, an overview of various trends in the industry informed by data pulled from the company's engine and Unity Gaming Services offering.

One thing that looms large over the company's findings is the state of the wider economy, something Unity itself bemoaned as it laid off several hundred employees earlier this year.

Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Unity Create senior vice president and general manager Marc Whitten readily acknowledges there were economic concerns around the industry and "a whole bunch of different, competing pressures weighing on everyone," but adds it wasn't all bad news in Unity's state of the industry overview.

"I was frankly encouraged to see some of the data in that report," Whitten says. "The fact that number of game players was actually up year-over-year for the whole year – and we continue to see that trend into this year – I think was encouraging. The fact that there were more games shipped on a bunch of different form factors on more devices was really strong.

"Against that are the challenges that a lot of game folks are having to manage, whether it was advertising monetization in general having some real softness or paying players dropping a little bit inside of that. But it's also just meant that people have had to continue to be even more focused on understanding their user, where to find their user, how they keep players engaged and, if they're a monetizing game, what their monetization loop is and how they focus on it. It's a tough environment, but to me it shows how massively robust and resilient gaming is."

The focus on gaming may be reassuring for developers