Should we sacrifice ARMv6 devices and use Unity 4?

We've been thinking about this question since we found out Unity 4 didn't support ARMv6.

Some relevant points/questions that have emerged during this discussion have been:

• Linux support, but do Linux users game enough to give the edge to Unity 4?
• Blackberry and Windows Phone support, are they worth it?
• PS Vita support, but license costs a bit.
• ARMv6 is big in emerging markets, but do they buy apps?
• Some improvements regarding development, things like copying and pasting components and stuff like that.
• How big is ARMv6 really? And are ARMv6 devices still in production?

If you have any other points, please feel free to share.

Personal choice would be Unity 4, just because there's a 4 on the box yay, but I've seen enough iPod 1 and 2s, and also older Android devices for it to occupy my thoughts, specially since I live in Venezuela, where older non high-end devices are common enough.

I just wanted to hear what other developers had to say about it, if anything, or maybe ARMv6 support for Unity 4 is coming and I don't know about it?. Or we just giving this too much thought and should we just use Unity X, because Y, and not worry about Z.

 

Most ARMv6 devices are a pain to develop for as as they can handle next to nothing performance wise. Unity isn't bringing back ARMv6 support either, instead they are dropping OpenGL v1.1 support too.

 

What you're saying is true, but I guess it depends on the game. We are working on a title that actually runs well on ARMv6 devices, and we actually tried to do it that way because our previous title runs like crap on ARMv6. Then after upgrading we noticed Unity no longer supports ARMv6.

If your game does in fact require a decent device, then you for sure can just move away from ARMv6, but since we had that support on the table from the beginning (because I actually felt bad for people who really wanted to play our first game but couldn't), it's a tough call for me personally. And we even made some calls around that when choosing our art style.

 

Why not utilize 2 different project directories? 1 for arm v6 and unity 3.5 and another with unity 4 for everything else. I mean technically it should all work fine wouldnt it? Unless your using some specific features in 4 that 3.5 cant handle, but at that point which one of those features would work for arm v6 anyway?

 

That would mean developing both in parallel right? Unless there's some way to do it, I'd have to copy/paste, etc, all the time, am I right?

 

Xcode no longer supports armv6 (and you need to use a recent version for the mandated iPhone 5 support), so it isn't a consideration for iOS.

 

Ugh... I just upgraded to Unity 4 and found out I can't export to my ZTE Blade San Francisco anymore. That device wasn't that bad, it always used OpenGL2.0 and Unity runs quite well on it. Also it was nice for optimizing. Now I'm glad I made backups and didn't trash my 3.x licenses.

It would still be interesting to know how large the market for ARMv6 devices is... if it's worth or not

 

As of writing there are no arm 6 games being launched in unity. See stats.unity3d.com

There hasn't been a good reason to support arm 6 since apple stopped making them 3 years ago. As for android, lets be realistic, few purchase really, and those that do, tend to purchase on high end droids (disposable income).

No disrespect to anyone but just leave the past behind including your weird niche devices nobody else uses (ie customers). The unity stats page is good enough to make a business decision from, for the majority of people.

 

Thanks, I completely missed this page. The 1.6% ARMv6 do indeed not like viable.