Yesterday Microsoft announced the acquisition of PlayFab, a cloud based back end
for games. PlayFab enabled you to provide features like multiplayer, leaderboards, messaging, content updates and commerce while providing real-time analytics and reporting via their dashboard. Most platforms were supported as targets with support for Unity, Unreal, Corona, Lumberyard, Cocos2d-x and the Defold game engines.
One of the biggest flaws with outsourcing your gaming back end has always been reliability. If the provider goes out of business, you are out of luck. Becoming part of the Microsoft team and a good fit for their Azure cloud offerings, this concern should be greatly allayed with this acquisition.
Details of the acquisition from Microsoft’s blog:
PlayFab’s backend services reduce the barriers to launch for game developers, offering both large and small studios cost-effective development solutions that scale with their games and help them engage, retain and monetize players. PlayFab enables developers to use the intelligent cloud to build and operate games, analyze gaming data and improve overall gaming experiences.
The PlayFab platform is a natural complement to Azure for gaming (Visit azure.com/gaming for more info). Azure, with locations in 42 regions worldwide, provides world-class server infrastructure, allowing creators to focus on building great games with best-available global reach. For gamers, this leads to a higher, faster degree of innovation and better experiences.
Incorporating PlayFab’s experience, growing network of game developers and powerful gaming-as-a-service platform into our product offering is an important step forward for gaming at Microsoft. PlayFab has served more than 700 million gamers and is currently powering more than 1,200 games with companies like Disney, Rovio and Atari. Its gaming platform powers some of the most prominent titles in the industry, such as “Idle Miner Tycoon,” “Angry Birds: Seasons” and “Roller Coaster Tycoon Touch.”
Together, Azure and PlayFab will further unlock the power of the intelligent cloud for the gaming industry, enabling game developers and delighting gamers around the world.