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Unity sees WebGPU as a growing market for game development

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2024-04-02 19:00:03

Read More from GDC 2024 | Keep up with the latest game industry event coverage from GDC 2024, including news, talks, interviews, and more from the Game Developer team.

Tired of being told the metaverse or web3 technology is the future of game development? Good news, Unity expects a far more boring (but useful!) piece of technology may present fertile soil for game developers breaking into a new market: WebGPU.

In our conversation with Unity interim CEO Jim Whitehurst and chief product and technology officer Marc Whitten at GDC 2024, the latter executive spotlighted support for browser-based Javascript API WebGPU as a major component of the soon-to-be-released Unity 6.

"I think the biggest platform change we're going to see this year is a lot of people starting to put energy into WebGPU," he predicted.

Games made for WebGPU can take advantage of a device's graphics processing unit while running in an internet browser. Games optimized for WebGPU can open quickly and play efficiently on desktop or mobile devices.