Microsoft's HoloLens Reaches Deal With One of the Biggest Game Engines

During Microsoft's Build conference today in San Francisco, the company officially announced a partnership with Unity Technologies--maker of the Unity game engine--related to the exciting-looking HoloLens technology. The Unity game engine is one of the biggest in the business, powering popular games like HearthStone: Heroes of Warcraft and Cities: Skylines, among many others.

As part of the deal, which Unity called an expansion of the two companies' "strategic collaboration," Microsoft and Unity are working together to offer an "optimal authoring solution" for HoloLens. This includes customized tools (anchoring holographic objects to specific places in the real world was one example) and other optimizations that Unity developers can use to create all manner of games and apps.

These new Unity tools for HoloLens will be available as part of the Unity Pro and Unity Personal packages for free, the company said.

"Expanding our relationship with Unity Technologies was a natural next step in bringing content to Microsoft HoloLens," Microsoft Xbox boss Yusuf Mehdi said in a statement. “We are very excited to unveil this partnership and look forward to the possibilities it will open for developers creating experiences for Microsoft HoloLens."

HoloLens was announced in January during a marquee Microsoft event. Outside of a Minecraft tech demo, though, Microsoft hasn't announced any games for HoloLens. However, this is an area the company is definitely looking at. No third-party games for HoloLens have been announced yet either.

For a closer look at HoloLens, check out GameSpot's image gallery.