Unity 5.6 will be released on March 31 and will come in with a slew of new and improved features. On the distribution front, Facebook and Xiaomi platforms are now more accessible to Unity developers. And folks who jump on board the Unity Plus bandwagon now will get an Accelerator Pack for free. 

It's interesting to see Unity start down the route Maya did which was integrating popular user made plugins (in this case, assets) into the software directly. While TextMeshPro is a good addition, I would rather see assets centered around accessibility and basic UX built into the engine instead.

More details here: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/02/28/updates-from-unitys-gdc-2017-keynote/

Improbable has announced SpatialOS Open Beta and is also launching the SpatialOS Games Innovation Program in partnership with Google Cloud. SpatialOS is a cloud-based computation platform which allows for processing of millions of persistent entities. It is currently integrated with Unity but Unreal support was just announced as well. 

 Improbable is a London-based startup that recently opened an office in San Francisco. With this new strategic location, an open beta and the subsidized development program it announced, it is clear that Improbable wants people using its technology to demonstrate the power of their platform. 

Source: https://improbable.io/2017/02/27/improbable-announces-spatialos-open-beta-unreal-engine-integration-and-launches-spatialos-games-innovation-program
Learn more about SpatialOS here: https://spatialos.improbable.io/

The Unity Asset Store has a sale this week. Apparently, they found out which assets everyone wished for the most and put those on sale. 

While it lasts, access the sale here: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/sale?utm_campaign=2017-02-Global-AS-Wishlist

According to a press release, Silicon Studio is releasing a commercial version of their open source engine this April. 

It seems like they're going after the slice of the Unity pie; the user testimonial in the press release talks about porting away from Unity because of superior architecture. 

Learn more about Xenko here: http://xenko.com/features/

Fancy making traditional role-playing games on the go or while laying in bed? Well, in a few months, you should be able to make RPGs on your Nintendo 3DS with RPG Maker Fes. According to their Press Event Wrap Up, NISA claims that no programming skills are needed and anyone can download a free RPG Maker Player app on the Nintendo eShop and play anyone's creations.

As a Nintendo product that centers primarily around user-generation content, it will be interesting to see how much customization will be possible and consequently, how much censorship will be applied. Details around portability of user creations are also scant but it seems unlikely that RPG Maker Fes' creations will work with other RPG Maker products like RPG Maker MV. If that were possible, one could easily enhance and monetize their creations.

The game was released in Japan last year and is due August 2017 in the US. The game can be purchased at Amazon.

Learn more about RPG Maker Fes here:  http://nisamerica.com/games/rpg-maker-fes/
Learn more about RPG Maker products here: https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/products