I think it is a forced move as you must stay competitive....I'm not bashing. If I were to create lite-c(or anything that I invest my time on) you can bet I would be selling it, there would be no "free" version...so a big thank you to JCL and staff.
as far as GS looking horrible, or not that great without shaders...think again, as a matter of fact look a WoW, and turn off the bloom/spec mapping/bump mapping...still looks fantastic, Torchlight doesn't use heavy shading and it looks fantastic...I can make some pretty neat stuff(I think)without the use of shaders.

if the engine is too much designed for the way directx and especially diretc3d acts, then you don't will see a support for other plattform that soon...
the option is to rewrite the core (maybe not the whole one but seperate really rendering from other things) but its a huge work and sometimes is better to start a new engine core than to rewrite a directx based one only to fit for multiplattform problem.

but to rewrite or write a new engine core it takes so much time, that is not realistic if they work now on this game project. so after or during this project maybe they see what could be a lot better in workflow etc. so that they recreate new editors etc. its still easier to make a new editor than an engine. The engine is more or less the same and you can use a lot of code twice for the new editor in the background, only the visual part of the editors must be changed. It's not a few days job but soon or later something must happen, and I think the engine itself is not that bad, tweak a little bit more the tools and people easily get more ideas of what great things they can create with 3dgs.
I used and use several engines ( closed source, propetary and open source) and for me 3dgs is still the best package even if I only use a6 extra and lite-c free. But I've also to admit that I'm very impressed about what I'm able to do with the other engine of the competitor who after only a few hours on the first day I used it. I feel familiar with everything and I have the feeling that I work professionally with it. But for rapid prototyping or rapid game creation I still consider 3dgs the best one, and the option for knowing that we can extend the acknex engine is and will remain hoepfully a great option

oh sorry I have a problem with my browser my answer above was for another topic intended *sorry*

if lite-c were to add at least shaders to the free version i would stop using unity3D altogether.And i think a lot of ppl here would say the same.

I agree totally but respect conitecs decision every company has to face their individual situation unity had their motivation to makes this step as like as conitec (and atari?) had their motivation for making lite-c free. I remember in 2001 or 2002 I only saw what other made with 3dgs,there was none free edition and I had to wait as long as I didn't had the money for my a5 standard(gold edition package of sybex btw) but then I worked and played around for so many years (later with a6 extra) with it. so we can be lucky that there is a powerfull lite-c free and yes the lite-c free is really powerful u can nearly do what you want, use external things like directx and opengl, win api etc.

Guys, Unity Indie CAN use shaders. It just can't use Render-To-Texture in shaders, that's all.

I don't know why people keep thinking it can't use shaders...

And i don't know why people are so mad at buying the pro version to get Render-To-Texture. When i got my A6 Pro, the only reason why i got it was RTT, so where is there difference? Just because A7 com offers RTT now too? Maybe Unity Indie will one day too? How many of you use RTT actually so often for games, especially for games that you are going to finish?

true words captain I only downloaded unity for the shader support but then I saw some other benefits of it and I think to use it more in next time.

Well, will the updates from Lite-C free to com cost the same as the update extra-com at the moment or will all Extra-users get a little benefit for com updates then?

i would imagine for those that didnt pay for their copy, wouldnt benefit from the discount. only for those that paid for extra, will get a discount on an upgrade.

Yeah, I just mean I bought the extra already. But this was some time ago. I just want to know if the upgrade to com will be at least a little bit cheaper for me then for the lite-C Free users