Gamestudio is a nice playground, specially the majority of all members. The minority are hardcore developers and a field between are hobby developers. I personally don´t switch to unity and break up with gs. Reason are 3 open projects. But I buy the unity and swim slowly to the other side. Just because I like the sum oft the unity concept and I like the developer oriented workflow.
That was just my opinion. (and... I write this in a very defenisve position... I don´t believe that gs will survive the next 5 years. - and I love my hobby and don´t want to come to close to a no returning point with gs)

i think gamestudio could survive as a small niche product (kind of like blitzbasic or something like that). doing an occasional small update doesn't cost jcl that much.

Right - but gs (will) or has lost the status of a main front engine for the middle and budget market. And I think - this is very hard to come to this point after beeing a member for nearly 10 years.
But everything ends somehow somewhere sometimes...

I think , with increasing technology each year like
SSAO, Deffered shading, surface shaders, new tools and
Torque 3D, Shiva , Unity going strongly fast in development,
users will prefer to buy Unity Pro indeed than A8 Pro.
(I don't talk about Gamecore, it's like a dead engine, showcaes is like dead, even the last post in showcase is from 17 August).

The main difference for example , others tools like Unity,Torque 3D, shiva, gamecore have all integrated in the main world editor (complete terrain editor ,physics, shaders ...) That's the weak point in 3DGS.

The other points that are lacking, is no game browser plungin integrated , and no mobile support like Android, Iphone. That's sad caus there is a big market here, accessible for lot of people (making an iphone doesn't require as work as a next gen game).

I don't think serious people will go to Pro version of A8 it can't compare with Unity Pro.
I think 3DGS will continue to survive in terms of price by selling a unique version at low price like the commercial version for example.

Some points that makes 3DGS solid are :
- For beginners in game coding or kids, using MED instead of a modeler and WED with BSP can be lot more easy for them i think also.
- The documentation and AUM magazines that covers all aspects of coding.

I think A8 needs to showcase its user projects more. I'm surprised at people's excitement over deferred shading in Unity 3, when there have been multiple deferred shading solutions available to A7 users for a long time (I know I made mine more than a year ago).

Similarly, we've seen SSAO all over the forums for a long time (with HeelX's implementation of Crysis's SSAO as the most recent example).

Unity 3 looks great. Don't get me wrong. I just want to say that I really did not enjoy that soldier demo. My internet can be a bit hit-and-miss, which meant I spent a lot of time just waiting for stuff to happen. They gave little indication that stuff was meant to be loading in the background. In the end I got an award for not being hit by any badguys, but it must be impossible for them to actually hit you, because I stood directly in front of them just looking around. In the end it was a half-baked demo that wasn't very impressive at all.

The biggest selling point for Unity in my eyes is its ability to be deployed on just about any platform.

Jibb

Do you have used Unity really, tried to make a game ?
I followed their Tihrd personn tutorial.
The Workflow, is 10 years in advance compared to A8 !!!!!
(I don't mention physics properties, camera panel, apply shaders directly on object properties etc ...., i stop , the list is so long !! )

I have a good internet connection, the soldier demo just runned great, and you need a good PC also.
I hope they'll deliver an installable demo directly on PC instead of Web Browser !

Sorry, but i tried Shade C package with A8, lot of folders,
even following the doc , i didn't succed to make work depth
of field !
Each time the users solutions are complicated , or not completely clear to run, they give a full demo instead
of a simple mesh, with only the code ... well why do you think we don't see any game using these solutions ?
No need, complicated, users that don't have seen it etc ...
Unity 3 performances are boosted , it have even lot more great things to come.

I like A8 (not it's workflow, or tools), but for small game making. If i planned next gen features, or mdeium game (penumbra style game, or some Follout 3 style with terrain)
with detailled 3D art at screen and performance need
indeed i would turn to Unity.

Don't begin to say 3DGS can do it , like in the hold days
people saying 3DGS could do same scenes as Unreal 3 engine !!
some of them even tried to make a 3D scene from a screenshot to prove 3DGS can do it , it maked my day

the difference is, with unity you get well integrated production ready solutions, done by some of the best programmers in the industry.

with gamestudio user contributions most of the time you don't. they aren't reliable. look at the problems with intensex for example.

i didn't like unity's soldier demo either. the artwork somehow has an ugly style. but it's still a lot better than any gamestudio showcase and it shows quite well what unity can do.

Strange to find the artwork an ugly style ?
I talk about the phase where you control the soldier,
terrain with good multi texture, very good destroyed brideg, good vegetation and trees, some good waterfall with water shader, detailled soldier model, some abandonned town with
AAA style textures ...
For me it's good , perhaps the fact to play in window mode
don't show it as it should do ?

For a simple demo, not commercial thing , it's a really good show i think; don't compare this next gen soldier and
the old low poly models given in A8 !
If you find that ugly, i can't imagine how ugly you can find A8 demos !
It's also a question of personnal taste or 3D artist
perception ?

Well i stop here, it was personnal opinions only.
Yes Unity 3 is solid as rock !!

i find minecraft a lot less ugly than the soldier demo for example. this has nothing to do with detail, "next-gen" or "aaa" (man, i hate those stupid terms ).

edit:
i have looked at the soldier demo again. ok, it's especially the intro that is badly done. the rest mostly looks fine.

Don't worry, I've got a good PC. It was just the load times that were killing me.
That assumes a lot about the proficiency of Unity's developers. I'm not saying they're doing a bad job, but working for a big company doesn't make them great programmers. The "integrated" nature of all those effects is my personal issue with Unity -- I'm not saying people shouldn't use it; I just don't like it for myself. These "integrated" effects are what created the need for their weird, ugly, unique shader programming.

Any shader programmer can use HLSL (or Cg, which is essentially the same thing), and can surely pick up shader programming in A7/A8 in an instant.
I haven't tried Shade C. I think people are best off following tutorials and using their own effects. There are a myriad different ways to do DoF, and I personally wouldn't want to use someone else's (whether that's another user, or the engine programmers themselves).

Jibb

EDIT: Obviously I'm very shader-orientated. I just really like shader programming. And it's the one thing people seem to avoid doing themselves.