Unity Windows Store and Windows Phone Offer - Free Dev Licenses

edg3

Bring your game made with Unity to Windows Store and Windows Phone

Unity makes it easy for you. Now Microsoft is sweetening the deal for the talented and committed Unity developers who want to bring their existing Unity titles to Windows Store and Windows Phone.

Tell us about the new or existing games you'd like to bring to Windows Store and Windows Phone, and you may receive extra benefits to clear the way.

Offer levels:
Level 1:

•Free Dev Center account for Windows and Windows Phone stores
•Free Windows 8 Pro license
•1 developer device (phone or tablet)
•Priority review for store promotion

Level 2:

•Level 1 benefits + the following:
•1,000,000 impressions ad package on Adduplex
•1 additional developer device (phone or tablet)
•Feature placement on the made with Unity gallery
•Access to technical assistance

To qualify for benefits, you and your team should meet some basic criteria:

•You possess some experience shipping games/apps on mobile platforms
•Your games have innovative content, differentiating your titles from other games in the same genre
•Existing games have received 3+ star ratings, with a significant amount of downloads

Space is limited and those who meet all criteria may not be selected. Selection is at the sole discretion of Microsoft.

Here: http://www.wpdevcenteroffers.com/

shaderbytes

I saw this announcement from Unity and had a look but when reading the getting started PDF it states :

To submit to the store, you will need your Windows Phone developer account and a licensed version of Unity. The trial version of Unity, will produce a water mark in the build that says “development build” on the bottom right of your game, and this will not pass certification.

So Unity free edition is capable of building and testing Windows phone/store games but is not capable to submit games to the store that will pass certification due to the watermark.

Im not sure how this scenario fits in with this new current offer? If anyone else knows about it do tell otherwise I will investigate it myself and report back when I have more information.

omegadrakk

Actually there is no such thing as unity trial anymore.
The old unity indie became unity free a while ago.

The “development build” watermark only happen if you check the debug mode option when you build your app.
I guess Microsoft didn't check Unity in a while.
Unity free is very capable of producing store ready builds

edg3

Yes, go take a look at http://ernestloveland.co.za/sokobomber-game, the screenshots are from the first build I submitted to Store and didn't use the right build to have it not show and it passed. You cannot change the splash screen image without Unity pro for W8 and WP8, that's all. So, to clarify, the building for store issue you are talking about is long gone.

The getting started PDF needs to be updated to be honest.

shaderbytes

thanks for clearing that up , its good news indeed.

roguecode

Before I bought Unity Pro I was testing how to get rid of the splash. In the exported XAML project I edited the SplashScreenImage and surprisingly it crashed. After playing around a bit more the conclusion I came up with is that they must actually check the filesize or hash or something to make sure you haven't removed it.
Just some random trivia :P

edg3

Yeah, I considered trying to build a splash screen that would work, but it will be easier if I just get a pro license eventually.