Optimizing games for the most popular hardware is key.
The global gaming market is booming, with an estimated value of over $184 billion and growing daily. According to Newzoo, mobile gaming now accounts for a whopping 50% of this market, leaving console gaming at 28% and PC gaming at 21% in the dust. Mobile gaming thrives on core technologies like smartphone operating systems, game engines, and hardware, and Arm’s CPU and GPU architectures are fundamental in this space. With 99% of smartphones running on Arm-based processors, optimizing games for Arm isn’t just a technical consideration; it’s a necessity for reaching the broadest audience possible.
Unity is one of the easiest and most popular tools for creating mobile games. In fact, 70% of the top 1,000 mobile games are made with Unity, and billions of Unity-based games are downloaded every month. As the mobile gaming market continues to grow, Unity developers must prioritize Arm optimization to ensure their games perform flawlessly on these devices.
Why Unity is a Big Deal
Unity is well-loved for its flexibility and ease of use, making it a top choice for game developers. However, its convenience can sometimes lead to complacency. Developers should not overlook the need for optimization. With only a few precious milliseconds available per frame, every bit of performance matters. To succeed in the global gaming market, Unity developers must treat smartphones as a primary platform, not an afterthought.
Getting Started with Unity
Unity is versatile enough to create both 3D and 2D mobile games. It boasts a large community of users and many excellent online tutorials. A great starting point is the Unity Learn platform. Unity is relatively easy to learn, primarily using C# for scripting, which means it doesn’t have a steep learning curve for programmers.
For game artists, it’s crucial to focus on how assets are created in Unity or imported from other sources. Unity assets include sprites, tiles, 3D models, textures, sounds, and animations. Producing performance-optimized 3D assets and scenes for mobile applications is essential. By enhancing the performance of your 3D assets, you can improve gameplay on both low- and high-end devices, ensuring your games run smoothly.
Arm provides excellent learning materials on optimizing geometry, textures, materials, shaders, and lighting. You can even advance your skills in 3D art optimization for mobile applications.
Why Optimize for Arm?
Performance and responsiveness are key factors that influence the playability of a mobile game. Arm processors, while powerful, have different performance characteristics compared to their PC and console counterparts. PCs and consoles often use active cooling systems and can handle higher power draws and thermal envelopes. In contrast, smartphones prioritize compactness and mobility, relying on passive cooling techniques and limited power consumption. This necessary trade-off means mobile devices emphasize efficiency and battery life over peak performance.
Unity developers need to optimize game performance by considering processor workload, memory usage, and power consumption. These optimizations result in games that stand out, have higher frame rates, and render smoothly. Arm offers a useful guide for optimizing Unity games for mobile.
By focusing on Arm-specific optimizations from the start, game studios can avoid lengthy reworks, leading to quicker deployment of their Unity games. Arm and Unity collaborate to provide developers with the latest profiling tools and optimizations for enhanced mobile performance. This collaboration accelerates the process of bringing mobile games to market.
Tools for Optimization
The Unity Profiler and Frame Debugger are invaluable for gaining insights into how different elements of your game consume resources. Tools like Arm Performance Studio, which includes Unity integrations, are also essential for capturing performance data directly from the device. This gives you a clear picture of how your game uses CPU and GPU resources, enabling more effective optimization for smoother gameplay and longer play sessions.
Using Unity to optimize for Arm benefits game producers, directors, and managers. It boosts game performance and graphics and speeds up development. By concentrating on Arm-specific optimizations from the beginning, game studios can avoid lengthy reworks, leading to quicker deployment of their Unity games. Plus, once the game is ready, it taps into the extensive and expanding market of Arm-based mobile devices.
Embracing a Mobile-First Approach
Treating mobile as a primary platform means embracing the constraints and capabilities of Arm-based devices from the beginning of the development process. This approach ensures that games are designed from the ground up to exploit the unique features of these devices, rather than being ported to mobile as an afterthought.
Arm CPUs and GPUs provide the core hardware for mobile gaming, while Unity’s game development platform plays a crucial role. By optimizing performance and graphics specifically for Arm CPUs and GPUs and adopting a mobile-first development philosophy, Unity developers can enhance the gaming experience and tap into the largest market segment with speed and efficiency. This strategic focus is essential in the ever-competitive gaming world.
A mobile-first approach also includes examining the user interface and user experience. In this context, it means embracing touchscreen interfaces. Unity has all the tools you need to build fast, responsive touchscreen user interfaces that enhance the overall user experience.
If you’re a game producer, director, or project manager, targeting mobile from the start of the development lifecycle is crucial. This saves you or your team from expensive rework or porting required to support mobile platforms later. Starting with mobile as a primary platform saves time and money and gets your game to market quickly.
Download Unity for Free
You can download and use Unity for free. While there are paid plans, you don’t need to worry about them until you make your first $100,000. Unity is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Head to the Unity website and download the version you need. The installer can also help you grab other tools you might need on your mobile game development journey.
