will Ngui become obsolete?

[Nicki]

Some people know more than others. 4.6 will come first, because uGUI will also be in 5 and Unity always said that uGUI would be released in the 4 version, and the QA alone on 5 will take much much longer than 4.6, because of all the new features. I doubt 5.0 would come out before the fall or xmas in all honesty.

actually no one knows when 5 will be released unless you work at unity. "the summer" which it is now is the best you will get, so it could well be 'within weeks'.

i also read that unity have said that 4.6 has no bearing on unity 5 release, 5 will be released and then 4.6 could come after or before makes no difference, whatever suits them.

That post was over a year ago, things have changed. NGUI has grown since then and the uGUI-team has grown since then. Nonetheless, as for obsoletion: NGUI might just become obsolete. It's sort of hard to say right now, since we don't really know what uGUI has grown into now. Suffice to say it will certainly be threatened by having a (finally) usable GUI solution out of the box. What NGUI and the other 3rd party solutions will need to do is to distinguish themselves in features, usability or something else that make them better than the free version.

Right now NGUI lives on performance, features and being the only real sprite based GUI out there (DF-GUI being the new kid on the block). uGUI will be a serious contender - once it's out. Whether or not you should buy NGUI now is up to your situation; if you want to make a game in the next 3 months and release, then I would buy it. If you can wait making your UI until September~November, then wait and see what uGUI will bring.

Not to be argumentative but...

http://www.tasharen.com/forum/index.php?topic=3484.0

ArenMook: "Nothing has been decided in regards to making it a pro-only feature, and I don't intend to compete with myself (all 3 solutions will be my UI systems after all). The only purpose of NGUI 3.0 would be to give current devs the ability to make UIs that will migrate easier to the next UI system months before the built-in solution is released."

?

and...

"With that said, as many of you know, my work at Unity involves the creation of the "next" UI system -- the followup to NGUI. In order for it to be as awesome as 'I' can make it, I have to make some compromises,"

not 'we' 'I'...can make it!


So if its the "follow up" to Ngui and its waay better and "awesome", how will Ngui 'not' become obsolete?

[Nicki]

Money isn't everything. ArenMook wants to make games, not UI - NGUI was made as a needed component for a game he was working on and it has just grown to be so big that it demands attention. Offloading this to Unity to obsolete it seemd like a good idea at the time, to be able to spend his time better. We all only have limited time, so once needs are met, we should be able to choose what to do with it.

Since then NGUI has developed further and in a different direction than what uGUI has, so they have changed from a predeccessor->successor relationship, to two competitors instead. Your suspicions are based on ourdated data - that "Intersting Times" post is from 2012.

The simple argument for buying NGUI is that it's available right now, where uGUI is "at some point in the near-future". If that doesn't convince you, then you need to look at features, which seems to have a big overlap, but it's not really clear exactly how they overlap, since all we have to go on is two youtube videos, one being ArenMooks talk from a while ago and the other being the new preview.

ok cool. so can you convince me why, i (and others of course) should buy Ngui when you helped to make the New free Unity GUI better than NGUI?

and i still dont get why you did that, it just makes no sense? you have the best selling asset on the asset store, so why would you help to kill it? you're obviously very clever, and thats just down right dumb. sorry to be harsh but it is. surely the obvious thing to do would be to make sure ngui is so good it wipes the floor with the new free version, but you did the exact opposite and made the free version better than your own paid for version??? you said you explained this previously but i cant find that, can you post a link where i can read your explanation for that?

[ArenMook]

What Nicki said.

@super-cypher, you seem to be basing your opinion on posts made years ago. As others have pointed out, NGUI and uGUI went their separate ways late last year, and nowadays they are completely different systems. uGUI is no longer the "successor". It was a successor to NGUI 2, not NGUI 3. Now, uGUI and NGUI are just different UI systems.

Whether something is a "waste" really does depend on your situation as Nicki pointed out. You got a fully usable, feature-rich and battle-tested system now, as opposed to a brand-new and untested system a few months from now. Worth it? Only you can decide.

One could argue that buying Unity is a "waste" right now with Unreal 4 being cheaper, feature-rich and right around the corner. But is it?