Corona SDK is now FREE!

The engine I use for mobile apps just became free! At least for all the essential features, such as in-app purchases, that used to cost an annual subscription in the hundreds of dollars.

As announced at GDC, Corona Labs is planning to expand its engine by building executables for the PC and Mac desktop gaming space. Well.. it's about time..?! The simulator already runs on both operating systems, so I can't imagine it being that much of an effort to build executables for these two. If additionally it could build for HTML5, then it would be very difficult for me to justify using anything else.

This is a very competitive year for mobile engine technology. Epic recently announced that Unreal Engine 4 is now "free" for 5% gross revenues. Meanwhile the personal edition of the recently announced Unity 5 is free with fair limitations.

Most likely I will opt for Unity this year, seeing that more and more web gaming portals are supporting it. Flash will continue to be the more popular option for the web, at least for the next five years. I will continue using it for game jams and art assets.