Explore our game
development solutions
Coding
Efficient and accessible coding done your way
Scary easy coding
Write code more efficiently
Automatically find and fill functions, methods, properties, and more with Visual Studio IntelliSense.
Powerful AI-assisted development
Boost your code confidence with AI. Available for C#, C++, Python, Java, and more, Intellicode will show you the most likely piece of code first, then finish the job with autofill.
Less reviewing, more coding
Get type and formatting recommendations, code inference, even refactoring. All through machine learning.
IDEs for your favorite game engines
VS Code and Visual Studio fully integrate into your preferred game engine, whether that’s Unity, Unreal, Cocos, or something else.
Streamline your code environment
Auto-format your code and embed it in auto-collapsible regions so you can focus on what you’re writing.
Manage cloud resources within your IDE
Use Visual Studio’s Cloud Explorer to manage your cloud resources from within the editor and easily connect them with your game code.
Content Creation
Add stunning graphics and audio to your game
Blow some minds with artwork and sound that immerse players into your world.
3D audio modeling
Model then integrate wave effects like diffraction, portaling, and reverb with the Project Acoustics engine.
Optimize 3D assets for any platform
Adapt your 3D assets to run smoothly on any platform with Simplygon. Use it as a desktop app or a fully automated pipeline.
World-class physics
Havok Physics provides elegant physics solutions and allows for real-time collision and 3D dynamics.
Have fun with the details
Create mesmerizing detail with physics and textures for clothing, hair and environments.
DevOps
Drive better communication and cooperation across teams
DevOps gives your teams an edge by shortening development cycles, speeding up innovation, reducing implementation failure, and optimizing team comms.
Improved collaboration
Deliver faster using proven agile tools to plan, track, and discuss work across your teams with Azure DevOps Boards.
Faster development
Coordinate early, stay aligned, and get more done with GitHub’s project management tools and seamless code review.
Deploy at scale
Build, test, deploy, monitor and recover with Azure App Center.
Ship globally
Automatically deploy to multiple data centers around the world with Azure DevOps Pipelines.
Proactively identify issues
Take a deep dive into how your games are performing and proactively identify performance issues with Azure Monitor.
Build with your community
Segment your audience, host events, run experiments, and reward your players using PlayFab LiveOps.
Engine Support
Work with your favorite game engine
Build your own or saddle up with powerhouses like Unity, Unreal, Cocos, GameMaker, and more, integrated right into Microsoft’s tools.
Build for high-performance
Integrate your source code into your engine with the small but mighty (and free) Visual Studio Code.
Streamlined IDE
Git commands are built into Visual Studio, so you can review diffs, stage files and make commits right from your engine's editor.
Choose an engine
GitHub provides a collection of game engines and frameworks for building across multiple platforms.
Easy troubleshooting
Visual Studio Graphics gives you an easy way to capture and analyze frames locally or remotely across DirectX, Unity, Unreal and Cocos.
Cross-platform debugging
Visual Studio helps you find and fix bugs while your game is running in Unity editor, player or DLL.
Connect to the cloud
Get started by creating an Azure trial account and see how easy it is to pull game telemetry to your Unity build.
Game Design
Design, plan, and collaborate
Elevate your game to art with all the tools you need to organize, scope, storyboard, and collaborate on your game's design.
Streamline narrative design
See your narrative in high-fidelity with Visio. Build flowcharts and hierarchical models – even connect your story design to real-time data visuals.
Real-time collaboration
Collaborate on your design documentation in real-time, including comprehensive review markup and formatting, references and more with Office 365.
Prototype game loop design
Prototype your game flow with PowerPoint Storyboarding and visualize how different scenes and situations interconnect, then connect them to Azure DevOps work items.
Optimize collaboration
A fully-integrated way to plan projects, assign tasks, set meetings, share files, chat, and more.
Organize your hive mind
Great minds don’t always think alike, but they can share ideas and riff on new ones together with OneNote.
AI & Machine Learning
Intelligently do more with less
To create more realistic worlds and challenges, AI and machine learning are your secret weapon. Our solutions better train your game AI, identify and predict patterns, and find efficiencies by automating manual workflows.
Predict player behavior
Know what your players are going to do before they do with Azure Machine Learning, and predict future trends like churn and lifetime value.
Detect and prevent cheating
Automate fraud detection with Azure Machine Learning to track and spot irregularities through in-game interactions and clustering algorithms.
Real-time text to speech translation
Azure Cognitive Services and our natural language processing translate text to voice in real-time.
Analyze 100,000+ images per second
Azure Machine Learning automates image analysis of over 100,000 objects, people, and scenes every second.
Create stunning personalized gameplay experiences
Observe your players with Azure AI and use that data to deliver rewards, achievements, and segment your audience.
Gather insights on game anomalies
Ingest time-series data of all types with Azure's anomaly detector API and accelerate insights about your game without testers.
Protect your players
Find and filter inappropriate game content in more than 100 languages with Azure's machine-assisted content moderation API.
Real-time language translation
Extend your game's reach across every device and audience with real-time content translation.
Support your players
Let automated customer support bots do the heavy lifting so you can focus.
Data & Storage
Data services with scale and security
Useful data is good data, particularly when global scale, security, and reliability are essential. Azure lets you focus on giving your players the best experience possible with data that is captured, scaled, analyzed, and transferred anywhere simply and securely.
Capture and analyze every data point
Capture data in real time during live events and build a deeper understanding of your players with Azure Cache for Redis.
Serve targeted ads
Manage your data and in-game ads the low-latency way with Azure Cache for Redis.
Live player rankings
Access real-time data and publish live player rankings with Azure Cache for Redis.
Mitigate fraud
Accelerate fraud detection by delivering low latency requests at high throughput rates with Azure Cache for Redis.
Restore player progression
Capture concurrent game activity for millions of players and facilitate archiving and retrieval needs with Azure SQL to help with customer support.
Create real-time nearest neighbor player rankings
Increase game competition by accessing gameplay data patterns to identify the nearest-neighbor reading with Azure SQL
Access mobile in-game event data
Utilize the speed and flexibility of Azure Database for MySQL to capture player progression and inventory in-game events across Android and iOS.
Elastic databases with serious scalability
Accommodate bursts in player activity with Azure's powerhouse databases to deliver low-low latency multiplayer experiences.
Unlosable data
Store player information, game state, and data across multiple devices and games.
Game Server Hosting
Reach more players globally
Our game server hosting solutions reduce operating costs while scaling to meet even the most strenuous traffic demands.
From on-premise to the cloud
Get your game services on the cloud to improve relisiency, scalability, and access.
Build, deploy, and scale quickly
Azure PlayFab's high-octane multiplayer servers mean business.
Add player authentication
Authenticate player identities from trusted platforms like Facebook, Google, Xbox Live, PlayStation, Steam, Twitch and more.
Host on your own dedicated game server
Let Azure help you spin up and run a dedicated server for your game.
Host servers all over the world
Azure has more global regions than any other cloud provider—with the scale needed to bring your game to everyone.
Scale with VMs, containers, or Kubernetes
No matter how you want to scale your game servers, Azure provides you different levels of management from deploying virtual machines yourself to orchestration of containers.
Scale stateless servers with high availability
Simplify your server management needs and let Azure Functions take care of running and scaling your game – with high availability.
Gamer Identity
Attract and engage your players through trusted gaming identities
Build a safe, inclusive community for your gamers with cutting-edge identity solutions.
One identity on every platform.
Use one cross-platform sign-on identity, equipped with privacy controls, family safety settings and child account support.
Leverage a vibrant gaming community
Take advantage of Xbox Live’s global, cross-device community to drive your game's popularity.
Authentication your way
Use Azure PlayFab social tools to enable player-to-player comms, individual friend lists, and major social networks to help your players find their crew.
Business Intelligence
Maximize your game's potential
To maximize a game’s potential to connect with players, keep them engaged, and generate revenue, you need solutions to track progress. Understand player behavior with custom data visuals, dashboard automation, and real-time event feeds.
Real-time dashboards
Dive into daily, monthly, and 30-day rolling views of engagement and monetization with PlayFab Reports.
Create custom data visuals
Visualize your data any way you want with Power BI. Develop, test, and debug those visuals with our open-source SDK.
Get automated business intelligence
Push data into a Power BI dataset, refresh your data automatically, auto-scale Azure resources, automate your application lifecycle management (ALM), and more.
Critical KPIs at a glance
In addition to daily engagement and revenue metrics, you’ll also see your Top 10 Spenders and Items with PlayFab Real-time Analytics.
Game Testing
Find bugs and squish them
Give your game the TLC + QA it deserves with Azure DevOps and Visual Studio. Test on thousands of real devices, from test plans and bug-reporting to deep diagnostics.
Rapidly deploy and test on thousands of real devices
Easily Ship for iOS, Andriod, Windows or MacOS and be up on the cloud and testing in minutes with App Center.
Test and capture comprehensive game data
Capture rich data about your game with comprehensive test plans for web and desktop.
Understand your players
Seek and destroy bugs with real-time analytics and deep diagnostics so your players spend more time playing and less time ragequitting.
Prep your game for certification
Avoid last-minute gotchas and make sure your game is ready to rock with in-depth certification testing.
LiveOps
Rev fast. Grow faster.
LiveOps is the industry's best-kept secret for boosting ROI and maximizing your game's staying power.
No patch required.
Store game logic in the cloud and change it whenever - without pushing new client builds on your players.
Go global
Dynamically scale your game experiences to over 50 global regions with Azure's unrivaled security and reliability.
Collect and analyze game data
Measure your success, track it in real time, and build custom reports with PlayFab Analytics.
Run experiments
There's a better way to deliver quick-turn content and changes. Iterate smarter and ship faster with the most flexible partner you'll ever have.
Build and sustain hype
Thrill, grow, and maintain your community with Azure PlayFab’s formidable suite of Game Services that compliment your existing backend infrastructure.
Run a smooth economy
Manage your in-game storefronts, inventories, and purchases with Azure PlayFab’s economy tools.
Personalize player experiences
Leverage PlayFab's player identity and real-time event tracking to segment players intelligently and inform new game experiences based on player behavior.
Monetization
The perfect economy for you
Whether you're creating in-game currencies or experimenting with different subscription models, we can help you find and master the right tool for the job.
Put that economy to work
Azure PlayFab's powerful economic suite include virtual currencies, inventory management, and catalog features.
Create and track virtual currencies
Build multiple virtual currencies with PlayFab Commerce, view and set player balances, set initial deposit balances, and specify auto-recharge rates.
Create and manage stores
Customize your retail experience with prices and segments, courtesy of Azure PlayFab.
Add 3rd party payment and monetization
Choose from a variety of pre-integrated tools and services. Only pay for what you use.
Storefronts for multiple platforms
Let no platform stand between gamers and your game.
Platforms
Enroll today to get a headstart on your game
Getting started on your game can be overwhelming. These make it just a little easier.
Build your first game on us
Get 12-months of data storage, compute up to 750 hours of VMs for Windows or Linux, and run 20 million event-driven serverless game functions when you sign up for an Azure account. That's your first game right there.
Many platforms, one tool
Learn how to develop a multiplatform game for PC, Xbox, Sony and Nintendo with just one tool.
From one player to one million
Seamlessly distribute your MMO all over the world with Aether Engine.
Support for your startup
From building your first game to shipping your tenth, Microsoft for Startups is here for you at every stage.
Scaling multiplayer infrastructure for esports
Microsoft’s partner Gameye, lets you build automatic store reporting for match outcomes, play community made maps for training and manage game updates to alleviate version errors, with a single API.s
Get your game on Xbox and Windows
Any developer can publish their game on the Xbox console through Creators Program. No NDA, no extra hoops, just getting your game in front of more than 57 million gamers.
Get inclusive indie support on Xbox
Microsoft staff are serious about making this your best game yet. So serious, they're standing by if and when you need technical assistance.
Player Engagement
Enable dynamic and inclusive community experiences
Microsoft helps creators reach and develop an engaged, inclusive community of gamers with a set of tools and services designed to encourage players to keep coming back.
Add multiplayer networking and in-game chat
Bring everyone together with PlayFab Party, a set of cross-platform libraries and services for easy multiplayer networking and chat. Relax knowing that Azure Cognitive Services makes it accessible to everyone with voice chat transcription and synthesized
Make broadcasts interactive
MixPlay enables viewers to directly control the environment in and around streamer’s broadcasts via user interface controls. Create interactive experiences which can run as a part of a game, entirely as a standalone application, or as a tool.
Do more with a vibrant gaming community
Take advantage of Xbox Live’s dynamic global community and get your game in front of players.
Promotion
Get discovered
Stand out from the rest with highly engaged gaming subscriptions, easy self-publishing, targeted advertising, and the biggest storefront on Windows PCs.
Drive discoverability
Xbox Game Pass titles get higher visibility and player engagement across Xbox consoles and Windows PCs.
Self-publish
Unleash your creativity with The ID@Xbox Program. Self-publish on Xbox One and Windows 10, or add Xbox Live to iOS and ANdroid with all the tools and support you need to knock it out of the park.
Find your players
Connect with millions of gamers through Microsoft Advertising.
Expand your reach
Get discovered, boost your earnings, get discovered, and get to know your players with Microsoft Store.
