Unity predicts mobile game longevity and more hypercasual games

Unity, the company behind the ubiquitous Unity development engine, released its gaming report for 2023 and predicts an increase in mobile games, high-quality titles from smaller studios, and hypercasual games – thanks in part to Unity itself. The report coincides with a new promotional trailer that debuted during the 2023 Game Developers Conference that highlights what Unity tools can do and who they help.

The trailer features a broad selection of games released in the past 12 months or slated for launch soon, ranging from the watercolor adventure Dordogne and FMV mystery Immortality, to the climate-conscious builder Terra Nil, space simulator Kerbal Space Program 2, and pretty much anything you can imagine in between for multiple platforms.

Multiplatform releases may become more common in the next year, but Unity believes that mobile development will become more attractive for smaller studios who, thanks to Unity tools can develop “AAA-quality” games for mobile, such as 2022’s surprise hit Marvel Snap. The report showed that interest in mobile gaming remained high after Covid lockdowns, even as spending declined and commitment to other gaming platforms diminished.

It likely won’t be just Genshin Impact-style mobile games with higher production values, though. Hypercasual games – mobile games that are usually free and require little input from the player – have become substantially more popular in the past five years. Unity believes the ease with which these fit into daily routines makes them ideal for busy students and working adults alike and sees potential in combining social elements with the usual gameplay loops.

Several of the 230,000 developers surveyed for Unity’s report, including those from indie studios and large companies like Zynga, said the Unity engine makes developing high-quality games in these hot categories easier and more accessible for studios of all sizes.

“There are more tools and resources available now to help studios start projects,” Navengate lead producer Anahit Fernandez said in the survey. “It helps smaller studios transition from having an idea to actually getting started.”

The asset store, for example, sells models and animations that can trim weeks and even months off of development time. Unity’s other offerings, including cloud systems, helped studios stay afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Takuto Nakamura, director of Mistwalker, the studio behind Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Fantasian, said it saved the team three months on modeling, while Marvel Snap’s Ben Brode said Unity Cloud Build let the team continue development even after shifting to fully remote work.

While these tools don’t mitigate every risk in the production process, they do mean developers can ship faster, free up resources for new projects or long-term support for existing games, and even launch their games on multiple platforms with greater ease. 

It’s not just mobile games, either. Some studio members in the survey said the range of tools at their disposal makes it feasible to develop “hyperlocalized” games – games designed for a very limited target audience that might have no appeal elsewhere. Naturally, the same is true for projects in between, like Terra Nil and Immortality, games that might lack the broad appeal of a Genshin Impact but still have an interested, paying audience.

Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF