Microsoft wants to make things easier for developers working with other game-creation tools.
The company announced on its website today that it has established agreements with Unity Technologies, Epic Games, and Chukong Technologies to include better Visual Studio integration in their respective development toolkits. Starting soon, anyone who installs Unity, Epic’s Unreal Engine, or Chukong’s Cocos2D will see a highlighted option to co-install Microsoft’s Visual Studio Community for Windows. This will also automatically install the plug-ins required to make games built in those other engines work on Microsoft’s operating system. Xbox boss Phil Spencer has promised that his team would focus more on the $25 billion PC-gaming business, and this is just the latest example of that.
Additionally, Microsoft will better promote information about Unity, Unreal, and Cocos2D in Visual Studio 2015. Coders will have the option to quickly install those tools, and this partnership will ensure that the various kits will work well with one another.
The game industry has evolved beyond the era where most studios build their own tools. These days, developers big and small use common off-the-shelf tech like the ones list above. This has lowered the cost of development, since creators don’t have to waste time investing in technology. By embracing three of the top kits, Microsoft shows creators that it understands their needs.
“Together, we are making it even easier for game developers to use the rich capabilities of the Visual Studio IDE to develop games for today’s most popular platforms,” Microsoft Developer Division president S. Somasegar wrote in a blog post. “These improvements build upon joint work to make access to the engines and tools needed for game development available to a broader base of developers.”
Microsoft says it will take some time to finish the engineering, so you won’t start seeing the fruits of these agreements for a few more weeks.