In just a few years, Unity has become a premier game development engine that has encouraged indie developers all around the world to create expansive titles for PC, consoles and mobile. With Unity 4, the engine is ready to take on big budget game development, and Windows 8 is invited along for the ride.

Unity announced that Unity 4.2 is now available to Windows 8 developers as part of a Windows Store apps early access program. Developers can use the new tools available in Unity 4.2 to create games for both x86 and ARM-based systems. It also supports DirectX 11 so games can take advantage of all the newest technologies available to developers.

“With the beta of the Unity 4 game engine for Windows 8, the entire Unity community of 1.5 million developers can get started quickly building games for Windows 8,” said John Richards, Senior Director of Windows Apps Marketing for Microsoft. “The number of high quality Unity-based games already created for PC, Xbox and mobile devices is impressive, and we’re excited to see the amazing games the community brings to Windows 8 with Unity.”

As part of the early access program, developers will be able to port games to the Windows Store platform using the Unity 4.2 beta builds. All registered participants in the beta will receive a two month trial license that will unlock Windows Store app platform support in the Unity toolset.

It should be noted that any games created for Windows 8 using this beta will not be available for commercial release. It’s meant to help developers get a feel for developing with Unity on the Windows 8 platform. Those who wish to commercially release their games on Windows 8 using Unity 4.2 will want to buy a full license when the public commercial release of Unity comes out. If you can’t wait for that, you can contact the Unity Sales team to work out a deal to publish a game using the Unity 4.2 beta.