Unity Engine and Airplay SDK updates inbound
Two game engine and tools firms have thrown their weight behind Blackberry’s tablet, the Playbook.
Playbook owner Research In Motion (RIM) has announced that both Unity and Ideaworks Labs will update their game creation tools for developing games on the tablet.
Neither company has specified when the updates will commence.
Ideawork Labs is updating its Airplay SDK for high-quality native Playbook games, while the Unity engine will add the tablet to its vast range of available platforms.
RIM will soon release its own native Playbook SDK, said to allow for C/C++ application development. The firm will also offer a platform for porting Android and Java apps onto.
Blackberry PlayBook will launch in the US from April 19. No release dates are available for regions beyond North America.
Advertisement
I've been following the BB tablet story, and this report misses out a key distinction between the announced support from Airplay and Unity. The distinction is correctly captured in the report from PocketGamer:
http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/PG.Biz/BlackBerry+PlayBook/news.asp?c=28666
Airplay SDK will add true support for BB tablet OS, and that support will be made available to all Airplay licensees. Unity are only supporting BB tablet OS by way of providing a bunch of games to the RIM app store, through bespoke per-game coding. So the only way Unity developers will have a chance of targetting the platform is by having their game accepted into the Unity "Union" program, and signing up to the according T+C's.
