Playfab GDC 2023 Update: PlayFab Unveils New Tools for Game Monetization, Player Retention, and Game Development Kits

This year at GDC we are thrilled to announce the release of three major features that address some of the biggest challenges for game creators.

March 22, 2023
An image with the Azure PlayFab branding

It is hard to believe it has already been a year since GDC 2022, we are excited to be back in person this year to share some exciting updates with you! 

At PlayFab, we are deeply passionate about empowering game developers with cross-platform cloud services that unlock greater player retention, engagement, and monetization opportunities. We are proud to be helping developers build games that allow their players to communicate, progress, purchase and play wherever and with whomever they want. 

Our PlayFab team is privileged to partner with and provide cloud services for some of the largest game studios in the world including Mojang, Rare, Ubisoft, Roblox, and Kolibri Games.   Our close collaboration with these studios has focused on addressing their major challenges not just for scale, performance, and reliability, but supporting the industry-wide shift toward longer game lifespans.

Over the last year, we have worked tirelessly in this area, reducing the cost of services maintenance over the extended life of titles, increasing developer velocity to get games to players faster and enable frequent updates, helping developers meet changing regulatory environments, and delivering services that enable games to sustain their player base with new and innovative player experiences. We are always striving to empower developers with scalable and easy to use tools to increase retention, drive engagement, and increase monetization opportunities in their games.

Last year at GDC, we announced exciting new features including the GA of User Generated Content and Public Preview of Data Connections plus new features in our Matchmaking and Lobby services.  Over the past year, we have continued to innovate and have launched new features in Segmentation, Experimentation, and the general availability of Data Connections. We’ve also expanded platform support for PlayFab Party to Linux and MacOS.

This year at GDC we are thrilled to be announcing the release of three major features that address some of the biggest challenges for game creators:

  • PlayFab Economy v2 General Availability: This feature empowers creators to build awesome monetization and progression system.

  • Player Churn Prediction Public Preview: This feature is built into PlayFab’s segmentation making it even more powerful than before. Churn Prediction brings the power of Azure’s Machine Learning in PlayFab for the first time, helping you identify players most and least likely to continue playing and empowering you to use the rest of PlayFab’s LiveOps features to increase your retention and engagement.

  • PlayFab SDK built into Microsoft’s Game Development Kit (GDK): For Xbox developers we are making it even easier to leverage PlayFab and the Microsoft Game Developer Kit (GDK) by bringing the PlayFab Services SDK to the GDK.

We are excited to bring these new features to game developers and look forward to seeing teams using them and providing feedback. We’ll continue to invest in delivering cloud services that will help you extend the life of your game with increased player retention and engagement.

If you are in person at GDC this year, we would love to see you! Attend one of our GDC panels or stop by and talk to us at the Microsoft Lobby Lounge. And if you are following along virtually, be sure to check out the new PlayFab content dropping over on MSGameDev.com throughout the show, including some great new feature overviews, demo videos and case studies.

To learn more about some of the new releases mentioned above, check out the links below:

Introducing Azure PlayFab Economy v2: The Ultimate Solution for Game Developers to Drive Engagement and Monetization with In-game Economies

PlayFab Launches Game-Changing Churn Prediction Service into Public Preview for Game Creators