Explore our game
development solutions
Code Editing
Get efficient and accessible coding done your way
Microsoft tools like Visual Studio IntelliCode, GitHub repos, and DirectX graphical power let you achieve more—regardless of how you prefer to code.
Write code more efficiently
Find functions, methods, properties, and more at the press of a (period) key with IntelliSense in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. Get more time to create using autocomplete directly in the editor.
Do more with AI-assisted development
Get an AI-assisted boost to write code with more confidence and speed. Access type recommendations, code inference, formatting suggestions, and suggestions on how to refactor code with IntelliCode (available for C#, C++, Python, Java, and more).
Use the IDE built for your favorite game engines
Whether you’re using Unity, Unreal, Cocos, or another tool, Visual Studio fully integrates into your preferred game engine—so use the IDE with the most power.
Manage cloud resources within your IDE
Use Visual Studio Cloud Explorer to manage your Azure-based cloud resources from within the editor so you can easily connect with them in your game code.
Content Creation
Add graphics and audio to your game
Games are more than just code. Artwork and sound are important details that help immerse the player in your game, and we have tools to help you achieve the right level of detail.
Enhance your 3D audio
Achieve your artistic goals with wave-based acoustics that model effects like diffraction, portaling, and reverberation with the Project Acoustics engine.
Optimize 3D assets for any platform
All devices have variable graphic performance and all 3D data is different—so adapt your 3D assets to run smoothly on any platform with Simplygon, used either as a desktop application or a fully automated pipeline.
Optimize in-game physics
Access world-class physics solutions for video games and real-time collision detection and dynamics of rigid bodies in three dimensions with Havok Physics.
NPCs that intelligently react
Create characters that understand and intelligently react to the world around them with Havok AI’s navigation mesh generation, which provides real-time adaptive navigation within dynamic environments using a highly optimized runtime.
Design your game with UX best practices
Move to the next level with the Game UX Master Guide, brought to you by Microsoft’s partnership with veterans in the industry to cover design for 2D and 3D, fundamentals in UX design, and more in-depth topics.
Bigger and more intricate worlds
Create realistic worlds with intricate geometry, high resolution textures, and mesh shaders with the power of DirectX 12.
DevOps
Drive better communication and cooperation across teams
Teams who plan smarter, collaborate better, and ship faster have an edge over the competition. Shorten development cycles, speed up innovation, reduce implementation failure, and optimize team comms with Microsoft DevOps solutions.
Improve collaboration
Deliver value to your players faster using proven agile tools to plan, track, and discuss work across your teams with Azure Boards.
Develop faster with project management tools
Coordinate early, stay aligned, and get more done with GitHub project management tools and seamless code review.
Deploy your game at scale
Build, test, deploy, and monitor mobile and PC games using Visual Studio App Center. Detect when your game has crashed and save that information to help fix it quickly.
Ship your game globally
Automate builds and deployments of your games consistently to multiple datacenters around the globe using Azure Pipelines.
AI & Machine Learning
Intelligently do more with less
AI and machine learning accelerate the development of more realistic worlds and challenges. Our solutions can automate manual game-balance testing workflows to train your game AI, find efficiencies, and identify and predict patterns.
Predict player behavior
Know what your players are going to do before they do it. Automate fraud detection, prevent cheating, and predict future trends like churn and lifetime value; with Azure Machine Learning, you don’t need a data science background.
Detect and filter inappropriate game content
Protect your players from inappropriate game content in more than 100 languages with Azure Content Moderator, a machine-assisted content moderation API.
Support your players with bots
Using the information gleaned through Cognitive Services translation and transcription, build out automated customer support bots that do the heavy lifting in helping your playerbase—so you don’t need an army of content moderators.
Bring your game to life and connect your players
With Azure Cognitive Services, connect your players on their own terms with real-time language translation, text-to-speech capabilities with lifelike voices, and more.
Data & Storage
Data services with scale and security
The data in your game is only as good as what you can do with it, so give your players the best experience by choosing a provider with the best scale, security, and reliability. With Azure, you can focus on giving your players the experience they deserve with data that’s captured, scaled, analyzed, and transferred securely around the globe.
Find and understand your players quickly
Publish live player rankings, access game segment data to manage in-game ads, and capture real-time, in-game events for downstream processing to build a deeper understanding of players—all in real time.
Create real-time player rankings
Access gameplay data for millions of players in real time. Maximize performance and speed up debugging with automatic tuning powered by machine learning.
Scale quickly and never lose data
Accommodate unpredictable bursts in player activity with databases that scale elastically, deliver low-latency multiplayer experiences, and enable faster debugging using mobile in-game events.
Game Testing
Find bugs and squish them
Quality assurance is critical to your game's success—even after it’s shipped. From test plans and bug-reporting tools to crash and health diagnostics, you can make sure your creation gets the attention (and QA) it deserves. With Visual Studio and Azure DevOps, deploy and test on thousands of real devices and avoid last minute surprises.
Rapidly deploy and test on thousands of real devices
Deploy your repository to the cloud and start testing on thousands of real devices—iOS, Android, Windows, or macOS—within minutes. Understand, track, and fix issues with your game using real-time analytics combined with in-depth health diagnoses.
Test and capture comprehensive game data
Build out comprehensive test plans that capture rich data about your game and can be tested across both web and desktop, helping you ship with confidence.
Gather insights on game anomalies
Use Azure Anomaly Detector to ingest time-series data of all types and select the best-fitting detection model to accelerate insights about your game without relying on testers.
Maximize performance and identify issues
With Azure Monitor, understand how your games are performing and proactively identify issues affecting them as well as the resources they depend on.
LiveOps
Rev fast. Grow faster.
You need to understand your players, meet their individual needs, and cultivate long-term relationships to grow a healthy community. LiveOps helps you shorten the feedback loop between development and player satisfaction, producing a higher return on investment and helping your game last longer.
Update with no patch required.
Store game logic, data, and assets in the cloud and update without having to push new client builds on your players.
Gather and analyze game data
Understand and react to players in real time with one-stop data analytics, storage, processing, and exports.
Run your game as a service
Learn how to run your game as a service with telemetry, automation, notifications, in-game commerce, and more using PlayFab LiveOps.
Experiment and learn
Segment players into logical groups and target them with incentives, live events, and split tests to ensure you’re always getting the most out of new updates to your game.
Multiplayer
Reach more players globally
Increasingly, games are building cross-network experiences so players can engage with each other from different identity domains, from Xbox Live to Steam. With proven stability, low latency, and server-to-player proximity, Microsoft tools help you provide the best multiplayer experience possible.
Choose how to manage and scale your game servers
Access different levels of management from Azure no matter how you want to scale your game servers, from deploying virtual machines yourself to using Azure Kubernetes Service for container orchestration.
Dynamically scale from 100 to 10,000,000 players
Take advantage of dedicated multiplayer servers that deliver low latency and high reliability—without the challenges of building, managing, and running servers at scale.
Authenticate and track players across devices
Let your players authenticate the way they want—from Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and beyond, players can link their favorite accounts to enable roaming and recovery of game data.
Get closer to your players
Bring your games closer to your players and reduce latency for fast, responsive online gaming with the scale provided by Azure’s 56 global regions—more than any other cloud provider.
Ensure high availability through serverless computing
Simplify server management needs for games that are not impacted by latency with Azure Functions. Streamline complex, stateful coordination requirements for multiplayer servers with the Durable Functions extension.
Keep track of your players, wherever they are
Take advantage of the secure authentication of Xbox services to connect your players with your game across multiple devices and platforms.
Give your players secure in-game communication
Simplify the way you add flexible, inclusive, and secure low-latency chat and data communication and real-time multiplayer networking to your game with a set of cross-platform libraries and services.
Track, compare, and reward player success
Encourage interaction between players and make gameplay more meaningful by maintaining leaderboards in your game with player statistics.
Distribution
Grow to engage with the world’s players
We know getting your game out there can be overwhelming. Allow us to make things a little easier. Microsoft is building platforms around you, the developer, to distribute and monetize the 2B+ players on the planet.
Reach the most engaged players across the globe
With Xbox, get access to the most inclusive gaming network that connects players across devices, along with tools that help you build engaging, successful games.
Take advantage of inclusive indie support
Get technical assistance when you need it and distribute your game to the full range of Microsoft platforms with the ID@Xbox Program; Microsoft staff are serious about making this your best game yet.
Simplify your publishing
Improve productivity while promoting and monetizing your games so no platform stands between players and your game.
Your game, in front of more players, on more devices
Take advantage of the power of the cloud to run your Xbox game on any device so you can reach and grow your player community in new ways—with no need to change your code.
Monetization
Make your game economy work for your players
All games must, at some point, determine how to generate revenue. Whether it’s creating and tracking in-game virtual currencies or running experiments to help drive conversions, Microsoft has the tools and services to help you reach and monetize millions of players. Find the monetization options that best engage and retain players for your games.
Get the right tools for your economy
Make your game economy work with Azure PlayFab economy features, including virtual currencies, inventory, rich actionable data, and a catalog that supports segmentation, sales, coupons, bundles, and pre-integrated support for third-party payment add-ons.
Create and track virtual currencies
Mint promotional coupons and virtual currencies with support for setting both initial balances and optional auto-recharge.
Create and manage in-game stores
Target player segments with personalized store offers and support payments with Xbox, Steam, Google, PayPal, and more. Process payments, sell catalog items, and guard against fraud.
Player Engagement
Enable dynamic and inclusive community experiences
The most successful games seamlessly create dynamic and inclusive gameplay experiences that continuously excite their players and help grow a healthy gaming community. With Microsoft’s help, reach and develop an engaged, inclusive community of players with a set of tools and services designed to delight and encourage players to keep coming back.
Make broadcasts interactive
Enable viewers to directly control the environment in and around streamers’ broadcasts via user interface controls from Mixer MixPlay. Create an interactive experience that can run as part of a game, entirely as a standalone application, or as a tool.
Engage with a vibrant gaming community
Take advantage of Xbox's global community and experiences both inside and outside your game to enable discovery and engagement with your game across devices, including iOS and Android.