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Powering games, empowering creators
From Halo Infinite to Yakuza: Like a Dragon, some of the biggest games use Microsoft platform-agnostic tools to create amazing experiences for players. At GDC, we feature games, developers, and solutions to inspire us all.
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Explore our GDC demos
Learn how some of the world’s most creative development teams use Microsoft technologies to power their games.
Forza Horizon 5
Powering games with data and analytics using Azure PlayFab Data Platform
No Man's Sky
Lessons in matchmaking and cross-platform play with Azure PlayFab Multiplayer Services
Psychonauts 2
Enhance Your Productivity with Visual Studio 2022
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Customizing touch controls for Xbox Cloud Gaming
Halo Infinite
Discover 3D content optimization with Simplygon
Rogue Company
Improving remote work with game production in the cloud with Azure
DOOM Eternal
Scaling global game servers with Azure PlayFab Multiplayer
NBA Clash
Identify the Best Growth Strategy for Your Game with Azure PlayFab Live Ops Services
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Growing marketplace engagement with Azure PlayFab UGC
Watch Microsoft technical talks
Hear from industry experts as they present the latest in Analytics & Data, Business, Cloud, Developer Tools, Online Services, Visual Arts & Accessibility
Solidify your Growth Strategy using Data-Driven Insights with Azure PlayFab Experiments
Use Azure PlayFab Experiments to run multiple, concurrent AB tests to assess your hypotheses and maximize player engagement. Determine player behavior in a managed and controlled environment by targeting players using Segments.
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Improve Player Experience with the Azure PlayFab Data Platform
Use the Azure PlayFab Data Platform to generate insights about player engagement, understand player behavior, and help you make improvements to game quality. Track latency, crashes, player progression and click-through rates, and write PlayStream and telemetry events to the storage account of your choice.
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From ID@Xbox to Partner Center: How to publish on Xbox platforms
Join a walkthrough of the ID@Xbox Onboarding and Publishing process that gives key insights into how to submit your game, apply to ID@Xbox, get access to development hardware, configure your store presence to stand-out, and launch your game to Xbox customers on console, PC, and web.
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Maximizing Success on your ID@Xbox Journey
Get an overview of the ID@Xbox journey, Game Pass, GDK requirements, dev kits, and other tools. Learn tips and tricks to succeed on console including best practices for marketing and publishing your game.
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Introduction to ID@Azure
ID@Azure is Microsoft's new program that offers independent game developers FREE tools, resources, and support to quickly get started using gaming cloud services. Accelerate development and drive title engagement, no matter what platform you’re targeting, including PlayStation, Nintendo, and mobile.
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Game Pass: Maximizing Your Game’s Total Value
Xbox Game Pass is the ultimate discovery engine for your game. Learn how Game Pass can help drive player awareness, engagement, and grow the total value of your title.
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Sustainability and How Game Creators Can Play Their Part
Integrating green activations into your gameplay and game production can be easy and powerful. Hear how developers have introduced sustainability in-game, and learn how creators can reduce emissions through initiatives ranging from game optimizations to collaborating with Xbox in open game developer alliances.
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Developing and Retaining Diverse Talent
To make meaningful and lasting changes in gaming we must look beyond diverse hiring to how we retain and grow talent to mid and senior levels. Join Jen MacLean, GM of Creator Partnerships, Xbox, in this fireside chat moderated by Annette Gonzalez, Creative Partner Program Manager, Xbox.
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New Face of Gaming
Our Xbox panelists Calicia Johnson (Senior Program Manager), Keirten Nivol (Software Engineer), Austin Joseph (Product Marketing) and Ron Brown (Studio Quality of Life Program Manager) share their experiences in gaming and explore how diverse voices help evolve the industry, moderated by Brittney Pettway, Senior Talent Pipeline Program Manager at Mojang Studios.
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Inclusive Leadership @ Xbox Game Studios
Join XGS leaders Mary McGuane (Obsidian, Double Fine, InXile), Kate Rayner (The Coalition), Shannon Loftis (World’s Edge), Helen Chiang (Minecraft), Kim Swift (Cloud Gaming), and Bonnie Ross (343 Industries) as they reflect on evolving game teams, shifts in business culture, and what’s on the horizon, moderated by Fiona Cherbak, talent program manager for Xbox Game Studios.
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Make Remote Game Development Easy with the Azure Game Development VM
Leverage the new Azure Game Development VM to quickly spin up pre-built workstations in the cloud for remote development, including ready built servers with a variety of common game development software and tools pre-installed.
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Harness the Power of Azure Cloud Builds from Development to Deployment
Learn how to take advantage of Azure’s integrated end-to-end solution for asset management and builds. Whether you're architecting a new build system or leveraging existing on-prem infrastructure, Azure helps you manage version control, CI/CD capabilities, and asset distribution.
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Reach More Players with Xbox Cloud Gaming
Watch this talk to get an overview of the Xbox Cloud Gaming features you can implement today, including touch adapted layouts, context sensitive controls, dynamic layouts, UI scaling, and latency compensation. Each of these features are designed to help you expand your game’s reach.
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Interested in Xbox Cloud Gaming? Your First Steps to Building a Cloud-Aware Game
Join us to hear how optimizing touch controls helps unlock the full potential of cloud-streamed gameplay. This talk focuses on the different ways you can create the right control scheme for your cloud-aware game including integration of the Touch Adaptation Kit and Dynamic Touch Control State API.
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Build Faster and Make Fewer Errors with GitHub Actions and Cloud-Based CI
If you’re looking for ways to save time, money and effort while reducing build errors, moving your CI systems to the cloud is the way to go. Learn how GitHub Actions can be used to set up a workflow to build a Unity game for iOS and Android, and submit it to the Apple App and Google Play stores.
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Introducing XGS Publishing’s New Cloud Gaming Organization
The new Cloud Gaming organization in Xbox Game Studios Publishing works with studios to develop cloud-native titles, and bring them exclusively to the Xbox ecosystem. This talk outlines the benefits of Cloud Gaming, and explains how to partner with the new organization to achieve your dreams.
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What is Project Thundernetes? How Kubernetes Helps Games Scale
Attend a demonstration of deploying and operating game servers on Kubernetes. Learn about game server multiplayer architecture and how to use Thundernetes, an open source project from Azure and Xbox, to deploy game servers on Linux Kubernetes clusters and manage and monitor the game server lifecycle.
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Leveling-Up Developer Productivity with Visual Studio 2022
Come and hear why Visual Studio 2022, now with 64-bit and GDK support, is the ultimate IDE for game developers. Learn about IntelliCode for Unreal Engine and Unity, faster debugging with Hot Reload, and how Visual Studio 2022 feels faster with large code base performance improvements.
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Tools for Remote Xbox Console Development
In the current hybrid work environment, it's more important than ever to have a set of tools that perform well remotely. This talk consists of several demos that highlight features in the GDK with Xbox Extensions (GDKx) that support remote Xbox console development.
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Solving CPU Performance Issues Using the Latest PIX Features
Learn how AAA game studios use PIX to optimize their titles on Xbox and Windows. Solve common performance problems related to CPU, memory, and file IO such as analyzing spikes in CPU frame time, finding memory leaks, and optimizing your title's file IO patterns.
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Optimizing IO Performance with DirectStorage on Windows
Create more immersive and detailed gaming environments while reducing load times with DirectStorage. The latest IO technology is now publicly available on PC for the first time. Learn how to integrate the API and use PIX on Windows to profile your DirectStorage-enabled games.
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Supercharge Your Creator Community with PlayFab UGC
Get an overview of PlayFab's User Generated Content (UGC), used by Microsoft Flight Simulator, Halo MCC, and Minecraft. We'll cover publishing workflows, API details, and a real-game environment demo.
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Azure PlayFab Multiplayer 101: How to Build a Cross-Platform Multiplayer Game
Learn how Azure PlayFab's Multiplayer Services can help you build a cross-platform multiplayer game. Designed for developers needing a portable, modern solution, it includes matchmaking and lobby with real-time notifications, networking, and voice chat services, cross-platform enabled out of the box.
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Build and Manage Your Global Multiplayer Servers with Azure PlayFab
Learn how to use Azure PlayFab Multiplayer Servers to build, globally distribute, monitor, and dynamically scale your game servers, leveraging the massive capacity of Azure's public cloud.
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Creating Safe and Healthy Gaming Communities with Two Hat
An exclusive and insightful look into how Microsoft’s Two Hat is partnering with game developers to build welcoming, healthy, and safe gaming communities through content moderation tools like Community Sift, and more.
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Create Dynamic, Accessible Content with Azure Neural Voice
Discover how the Azure Speech SDK can help you add accessible and localized content to your game. Learn about Azure’s text-to-speech and custom neural voice services, and how you can accelerate game development with natural sounding voices.
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3D Content Optimization Deep Dive: Deconstructing "A walk in the park" with Simplygon
Join Simplygon for a guided demo of advanced 3D optimization features such as Reduction, Visibility Culling, Billboard Cloud, Object Aggregation, Remeshing, and more.
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Optimizing Vehicles with Simplygon
Cars are notoriously difficult objects to optimize in-game due to their hard surfaces and incredibly shiny skins. Simplygon is the gold standard in 3D content optimization, recognized for eliminating rendering errors and effortlessly delivering perfect vehicular fidelity.
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Creating Cross-Platform Mixed Reality Experiences
Accelerate your mixed reality development with the Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK) v3 for Unity, an open-source project driven by Microsoft. Join this talk for an overview of the new MRTK architecture and features, and learn how spacial building blocks enable rapid prototyping and cross-platform device support.
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Making Games More Accessible Can Be Easy with Microsoft Game Accessibility Resources
Make your games accessible to millions of gamers with disabilities by leveraging best practices, guidelines, learning paths, and other resources from Xbox. Learn about the Microsoft Game Accessibility Testing Service, Game Accessibility Feature Tags, and more.
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