BlackBerry and Unity Technologies are working together to create a deployment add-on for BlackBerry 10 smartphones.
BlackBerry is banking on empowering Unity’s more than 1.5 million strong developer community to publish games on these platforms in 3D and 2D. The deployment tools will also be available for BlackBerry PlayBook tablets when they run the BlackBerry 10 OS.
Unity plans to make BlackBerry 10 one of the premiere mobile platforms supported by its Unity Engine. The deployment tool is currently in development by Unity and BlackBerry, and will be released as an add-on option for Unity.
David Helgason, CEO, Unity said company developers have an extensive catalogue of incredible mobile games, many of which are award-winning. The plan is to offer Unity developers access to the new BlackBerry 10 platform. It will provide them with another avenue to have their games “devoured by an audience hungry for entertainment. ”
BlackBerry will also seed the Unity development community with BlackBerry 10 smartphones for testing to provide developers the best possible environment to create amazing games for the new platform. Unity and BlackBerry will hold developer meet up events in Europe and North America and will give qualified developer attendees Unity Pro and BlackBerry 10 smartphones.
Alec Saunders, Vice President, Developer Relations and Ecosystems at BlackBerry, said one of the driving forces for success for a mobile platform is a strong games offering. BlackBerry customers have already shown their hunger for mobile gaming, with games being one of the strongest categories on the BlackBerry World storefront and continuing to grow in popularity. Soon Unity developers will be able to use this deployment tool to quickly and easily offer their games to BlackBerry customers.
A free beta version of the Unity add-on will be made available to a limited number of qualified developers in the spring. Unity is expecting the final release to be available in the summer of 2013.