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Web player adoption

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Nightmaare, Jan 20, 2010.

  1. Nightmaare

    Nightmaare

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2009
    Posts:
    7
    Hi guys, do you have any information about what is the number of people that have unity web player installed?


    Someone told us (my team) that we're better off with using flash when creating games ie. for facebook, since virtually almost everyone has flash plugin installed. The problem they say, is that casual players don't like to install/don't know how to install anything additional, they just want to hit button and start playing.

    So, if the adoption of unity's web plugin would be low, we would be risking loss of sales due to people who shy away from our game. That's why we're looking for some statistics and hard data :)


    So far, I found no info on Unity page or in forum. The only thing I found was this page: http://www.develop-online.net/features/668/Inside-the-Unity-Web-Player and this quote:

     
  2. Dreamora

    Dreamora

    Joined:
    Apr 5, 2008
    Posts:
    26,601
    UT does not hand out official numbers on the current install base I think.

    But already in Summer 09 after the start of windows editor usage, Unity had a webplayer install rate of 1M new users per month.

    With more and more games appearing on facebook (there is a good dozen or alike already on it) and major webplatforms allowing unity webplayers too, I would assume that the install rate now is much higher actually.

    Also with Unity 2.6, the requirement of having admin rights to install it were removed, so there is now a little to no barrier other than "2 clicks".

    What to use highly depends on your project.
    If you can afford to have the low performance and 2D only capabilities, then flash might be an option.
    But if you want 3D or need hardware acceleration and effects for the rendering, flash does not even exist as an option at all actually. Then you can choose between unity or a custom solution with an all own plugin. The vote then pretty surely would go towards Unity

    And that Unity even on its worst day flattens flash completely performance wise is out of question.

    Adobe just sat too long on their back "due to market monopol dominance" instead of driving the technology further past the year 2k pure cpu level so they now get ripped apart by Silverlight / Moonlight on the 2D - movie end and by Unity on the serious game platform end.

    That they could be much further and have realistic hardware acceleration has been shown for a long time by Scaleform which basically does what Flash should have been doing since CS2 days at very latest.
     
  3. HiggyB

    HiggyB

    Unity Product Evangelist

    Joined:
    Dec 8, 2006
    Posts:
    6,183
    The "problem" when looking for these numbers is that folks like Adobe pay for NPD/Gartner (market research firms) to run wide-spread tests to determine their plugin penetration rates, we've not done that. What we can offer are comments about the overall install base we believe is out there along with numbers surrounding our monthly install rates. Ready?

    As of today we estimate that there are something on the order of 20M or so installed Unity Web Players out there. We tend to offer that as a conservative number and there may be more, but that's a number we're generally confident in offering. To go along with that we're looking at 1M+ installs per month these days the number varies from month to month, but by and large it's on the increase each month. A year or so ago we'd have hesitated at saying anything larger than 5-7.5M installs with 300-400K per month joining in, now it's 20M overall with 1M+ per month, and those numbers are always on the rise.

    It's hard to argue against the fact that the Flash Player in some form is installed on nearly every machine, so we cannot win the overall penetration battle. What you can counter with is:

    1. Unity allows you to deliver an entirely different breed of content than Flash can ever dream of. If you're ok with a largely 2D experience and never need to go beyond that then perhaps you're ok with just Flash. But if you want a truly differentiated and better experience, one that offers true real-time 3D on a robust level, then Flash is simply not an option, Unity is.

    2. While we cannot cite penetration numbers in the 90+% range we can say that many sites hosting Unity content have success rates in the 70-80% range. When I say "success rates" I'm referring to the percentage of people that hit a game page and actually reach the content. Of those that visit a fair number must install the player, but looking at that 70-80% figure compared to our "mere" 20M installed users (which is what, a few percent of all web users?) you can see that the vast majority of people push through the install process and complete it.


    So while we don't win (yet) the penetration argument, we do offer you the ability to create and distribute premiere content unmatched by Flash (or any other in-browser tech), and we do so with an extremely optimized and smooth install process to stay out of your, and your user's way when trying to reach that content.
     
  4. mrepetto

    mrepetto

    Joined:
    May 30, 2009
    Posts:
    10
    HiggyB, good comment/reply, really helpful.

    Thanks for sharing this info!

    regards,

    Martin
     
  5. skylebones

    skylebones

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2009
    Posts:
    106
    Thanks for this info HiggyB. I've had the exact flash vs. unity plugin question posed to me before. "everyone has flash, aren't we better off using that?". and I've always been able to convince the people I was working with that unity is the way to go, but it's nice to have some better information to back it up.
     
  6. yoyo

    yoyo

    Joined:
    Apr 16, 2010
    Posts:
    112
    HiggyB, can you share any new information? It's a year later, and would be nice to know the latest numbers. Did you add 1M users a month since January 2010? If so, we should be up to around 35M installs ... perhaps higher if trends have accelerated.

    These sorts of analytics are very important to companies deciding which technology to invest in, so we would appreciate any information you can share.
     
  7. Kusacubari

    Kusacubari

    Joined:
    Mar 14, 2012
    Posts:
    2
    Higgy man, you could really help us out answer these questions each month would be fab... its a now 2012 so hop to it please fella.
    Thanks
     
  8. HolBol

    HolBol

    Joined:
    Feb 9, 2010
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    2,887
    Higgy doesn't hang around the forums anymore, and hasn't done for over a year now (I think).
     
  9. Duskling

    Duskling

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2011
    Posts:
    1,196
    I am not sure,

    But every computer I use, that does not have unity web player, just works with chrome.

    Just open up chrome, go to a unity game, and it runs. I don't have to install anything.
     
  10. npsf3000

    npsf3000

    Joined:
    Sep 19, 2010
    Posts:
    3,830
    You could bring up an old thread... or you could read the damn press releases:

    http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/unity-reaches-one-million-registered-developers-1641486.htm

    Mirroring the growth of the Unity development platform is the Unity Web Player which had reached an impressive 125 million installs. The install rate of the Web Player also continues to grow and now reaches over 5 million new computers each month with all indication that this rate will continue to rise.
     
  11. Gigiwoo

    Gigiwoo

    Joined:
    Mar 16, 2011
    Posts:
    2,981
    Amazing press info! 300k devs use Unity every month? Holy cowsors!
     
  12. yuriythebest

    yuriythebest

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2009
    Posts:
    1,121
    "devs" here means just anybody who downloaded the unity3d engine - it may be someone who will just open it, create a few boxes and close it