Unity Android and first Unity PSN game demoed at GDC

Middleware provider Unity Technologies has announced the availability of Unity Android at GDC, along with the first PlayStation Network title authored on the Unity platform.

Unity Android and Unity Android Pro are now available for purchase or trial download from the company's website. The cross-platform support of the Unity technology means that applications can be ported instantly from other formats, including iOS.

A preview version of Unity Pro Android was introduced last year, with almost 50 games using it far - including iOS to Android ports such as Battle Bears, Castle Warriors, Doodle Bowling, Drift Mania Championship and Samurai II: Vengeance.

Unity Android is an add-on to the free version of Unity, and is available for $400 (£246). Unity Android Pro is an add-on to Unity Pro and available for $1,500 (£923).

"Porting both Battle Bears games from iPhone to Android took us less than two weeks," said Benjamin Vu, co-founder and president of SkyVu Pictures. "We had to adapt our art a bit and do some fine tuning but Unity provided us a one-click solution to get to the Android Market and further extend the reach of our brand to millions of new users."

Also being demonstrated at GDC is the PlayStation Network title Rochard, the first game on the download service to be authored on the Unity platform.

Created by developer Recoil Games (founded by former Remedy Entertainment team members) and published by Sony Online Entertainment, Rochard is due to released this spring. The game is a side-scrolling action puzzler, where the hero must manipulate gravity to defeat enemies.

The Unity platform was made freely available in 2009 and the company claims it is today the number one development platform on the market, with more than 400,000 developers. Although its emphasis continues to be the Web and mobile, Unity Technologies is also keen to expand its business amongst console developers.

"Unity has become the 3D authoring platform of choice for more than 400,000 developers and our vision has always been to build a unified platform for game development that offers the broadest market support," said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies.

"Last year we introduced support for the PlayStation 3 and are excited to support the first commercial releases on the platform. In the future we look forward to continuing to expand the reach of our customers' games to new platforms and audiences."