Dream. . Launch. Run. Repeat.

Microsoft Game Stack. Achieve More. Game Stack. Achieve More.

The products within the So, whether you’re looking to Microsoft Game Stack were built host your game in the cloud, for like us — developers analyze and optimize your who dream big and need live titles, or reach the most tech solutions that say yes to passionate and engaged wherever that dream takes them. on the planet, Microsoft Game Stack can help you achieve more. Game Stack brings together our best resources to create a full Here’s to making the game of technology stack that helps you your dreams. in the development process — no matter where you are on your journey, or how big or small your team might be.

2 Microsoft Game Stack | 3 Microsoft Game Stack Microsoft helps you achieve more, regardless of what stage of the developer journey you‘re on.

CREATE OPERATE DESIGN BUILD TEST PUBLISH MONETIZE MEASURE ENGAGE GROW

Azure Gaming

Visual Studio ID@

Simplygon Azure PlayFab Azure PlayFab

DirectX Partner Center

Havok Creators Program Power BI

Visual Studio App Center

Xbox Live Xbox Live

Azure Dev Ops

GitHub Dev Lab

UWP/WIN32

Microsoft Office

4 Microsoft Game Stack | 5 DESIGN Azure DevOps Mixed Reality Plan smarter, collaborate better, Develop VR experiences for a automate and ship faster with range of mixed reality headsets. a complete end-to-end set of Build UWP apps for the Creating a great game starts with great modern DevOps services. Microsoft Store, or Win32 apps game design. We’re invested in helping Use the full toolchain or pick for SteamVR, the choice is yours. you achieve that. aka.ms/gsgdesign and choose the DevOps Mixed reality also allows you to components that complement target both integrated graphics your existing workflows. cards or high-end gaming rigs aka.ms/gsgazuredevops for immersive experiences. aka.ms/gsgmr Whether it’s Project to manage your game development Simplygon is the gold progress, Excel to model your for on-premise automated game play impact, or Teams 3D Optimization. Adapt your to bring together a distributed 3D assets to run smoothly on team with chat, Visual Studio any platform. integration and meetings aka.ms/gsgsimplygon and virtual conferencing, Microsoft Office gets your design well underway. aka.ms/gsgoffice

6 Microsoft Game Stack | 7 GitHub Orleans GitHub is a development community Created by , BUILD inspired by the way you work. Orleans is an open- framework From open source to business, for building distributed high-scale you can host and review code, computing applications such as Part of the success of your game depends manage projects, and build multiplayer games. It’s been used by games and alongside , , and PlayFab. on every stage of the development process 31 million developers. aka.ms/gsgorleans aka.ms/gsggithub getting equal attention. Microsoft has Visual Studio a toolbox ready for you to rely on no Building your games with DirectX, Havok is a modular suite of software , or Cocos? Use Visual Studio matter what you’re creating. development kits for game engines to create once and publish to 21 aka.ms/gsgbuild that puts the power in the hands platforms, including all mobile of creators, enabling state-of-the- platforms, WebGL, Mac, PC and art believability and interactivity desktop, web or consoles. DirectML DirectX through advanced physics Use powerful cross-platform tools DirectML allows you to use trained Microsoft DirectX graphics simulation and pathfinding, while to make your interactive content run machine learning models in your provides a set of that you mitigating the overall cost and risks great on any device. Windows apps (#, C++, and can use to create games and associated with creating today’s aka.ms/gsgvisualstudio JavaScript). Hardware optimizations other high-performance leading games. for CPU and GPU additionally multimedia applications. aka.ms/gsghavok enable high performance for quick DirectX includes support for both evaluation results through DirectML. 2D and 3D graphics. aka.ms/gsgdirectml aka.ms/gsgdirectx

8 Microsoft Game Stack | 9 Partner Center Visual Studio Partner Center and Microsoft Store Write high quality code with provide the ability to flight your comprehensive testing tools. game updates and fixes, and even Using Visual Studio, you can write provide 5x5 codes and beta access code faster, debug and diagnose for specific people so you can make with ease, test often, and release sure your game is ready to go. with confidence. aka.ms/gsgpartnercenter aka.ms/gsgvisualstudio

PlayFab Content Visual Studio App Center Make the most of your soft launch Whether you’re building your window by leveraging PlayFab to run games with Unity, MonoGame or experiments, monitor performance, native in Java and Swift, take your and tune configuration to boost game development to the next key stats like retention and level with App Center. Run and test TEST monetization. on real Android and iOS devices, aka.ms/gsgplayfab diagnose with ease, and release with confidence. Before you introduce your game to aka.ms/gsgappcenter the world, test with confidence using manual and exploratory testing tools. aka.ms/gsgtest

10 Microsoft Game Stack | 11 Azure Spatial Anchors and with Build cross-platform, multiplayer AR Xbox Live, giving studios the tools apps that map, pin 3D content to, and support needed to maximize and recall precise points of interest, their success. enabling you to deliver location- aka.ms/gsgidatxbox based or large-space social gaming. Partner Center Deploy across iOS, Android, and Whether you’re an app creator, HoloLens devices. game developer, or partner, aka.ms/gsgspatialanchors we can help you reach more Creators Program customers, provide greater service, Creators Program strives to make it and promoting and simple for any developer to publish monetizing games. their game to Xbox or Windows. aka.ms/gsgpartnercenter PUBLISH No concept approval required, UWP and a simplified certification process, Universal Windows Platform (UWP) allows you to quickly publish your is an open source API to help When your game is ready to ship, our game across the Microsoft ecosystem. develop apps and games that run aka.ms/gsgxblcp platform and tools can empower you to on Windows 10, Xbox One and reach the most passionate and engaged ID@Xbox HoloLens without the need to be The ID@Xbox program enables re-written for each. It supports gamers, no matter where they play. qualified game developers of all Windows app development using aka.ms/gsgpublish sizes to unleash their creativity by C++, C#, VB.NET, and XAML. self-publishing digital games on aka.ms/gsguwp

12 Microsoft Game Stack | 13 MONETIZE Microsoft Store The latest Store options help you reach more customers, improve The strategies to monetizing your game your productivity, and promote and are constantly evolving. Thankfully, so monetize your apps and games. aka.ms/gsgstore are we.

aka.ms/gsgmonetize PlayFab Commerce PlayFab’s in-game commerce system, with features like receipt validation, targeted stores, player segmentation, and commerce analytics, allows you to boost revenue, engagement, and retention. aka.ms/gsgplayfab

14 Microsoft Game Stack | 15 Azure Gaming Power BI MEASURE With Azure’s AI and Machine Business intelligence and analytics Learning capabilities, you’re set up from Microsoft Power BI can for success in building cloud-based be customized, extended, and Data without insight is just numbers. measurement tools that will be with embedded in applications using our Use these services to gain the insights you wherever your players are. comprehensive set of APIs and fully aka.ms/gsgazure documented SDK libraries. that will help you better test, measure, aka.ms/gsgpowerbi PlayFab Analytics and learn your way to success. Go beyond simple vanity metrics, Visual Studio App Center aka.ms/gsgmeasure to fully actionable analytics, with Monitor the health of your app and PlayFab’s powerful real-time triage issues faster with live crash data pipeline, data exchange, reporting, detailed diagnostics, dashboards, and reports. Measure and full stack traces. Integrate this what really matters, then make data into PlayFab for even deeper changes quickly to implement a fully insights on your player experience iterative development loop. and respond accordingly. aka.ms/gsgplayfab aka.ms/gsgappcenter

Microsoft Game Stack | 17 Mixer Xbox Live Live streaming video on Engage communities console, PC, or mobile with inside and outside of your game sub-second latency and unique across PC, mobile, console and interactive capabilities. the web. Xbox Live includes Mixer is blurring the lines Achievements, Leaderboards, between watching and Parties, Clubs, and cross- playing – giving game platform play. developers a new way to aka.ms/gsgxbox engage audiences. aka.ms/gsgmixer

PlayFab ENGAGE Extend your game’s lifecycle by deeply engaging your players with targeted experiences using PlayFab’s full suite of LiveOps Ensure your breakthrough game breaks capabilities, including live through. These services will help you events, messaging, offers and promotions, content updates, drive discoverability and richly engage and more. your players. aka.ms/gsgplayfab aka.ms/gsgengage

18 Microsoft Game Stack | 19 Azure Gaming PlayFab As your game grows, so does the Configure real-time segmentation needs of your infrastructure. With and deliver custom experiences with Azure, you can dynamically scale player messaging, leaderboards, across 54 Azure regions around the tournaments, and commerce to help world, including , more than grow your player base. any other cloud provider. aka.ms/gsgplayfab aka.ms/gsgazure Xbox Live Mixer Grow your game with a social Grow your player base through network for gamers of more than 60 interactive live streaming video on million monthly active users across console, PC, and mobile. Featuring console, PC, mobile, and the web. GROW sub-second latency and unique aka.ms/gsgxbox interactive capabilities. aka.ms/gsgmixer Microsoft has multiple solutions to help grow your player base. These tools and services will help lower the cost of user acquisition. aka.ms/gsggrow

20 Microsoft Game Stack | 21 AZURE Azure can help you safely and securely store player data, dynamically scale With Azure, you can bring your game to your multiplayer experiences, and save market quickly, deliver it on any end-point, you money as your game grows. and scale your game on a global platform Smart Scaling Data Services with 54 Azure regions. • Virtual machines (VMs) with • Blob storage - get for aka.ms/gsgazure Windows and Linux OS images -scale game data, including all files types anywhere from one to thousands of and unstructured data like images, VMs with built-in virtual networking audio, video, and more. and load balancing, while taking • Azure Cosmos DB is a globally advantage of hybrid consistency distributed, multi-model, low- • ’s Rainbow Six Siege uses Azure • , previously known with on-premise systems latency database solution to read, to dynamically deliver immersive as Microsoft Game Studios, delivers • Service Fabric - focus on building write, and query game and player multiplayer games globally epic Xbox experiences by analyzing your game and let Azure solve the data faster and with schema hundreds of billions of game events • Halo 5 uses Azure Cosmos DB to hard distributed systems problems flexibility. Backed by a 99.999% each day across Minecraft, Halo, , elevate social gaming with Spartan such as reliability, scalability, availability SLA. Companies and management, and latency. • Azure SQL Database is the • , from IO-Interactive, slays • Funrock runs high performance • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) intelligent, fully managed relational expectations using Azure to analyze infrastructure built on Azure is a fully managed service that cloud database service that player behavior in real-time simplifies the deployment and provides the broadest SQL operations of Kubernetes and engine compatibility, all while using enables you to dynamically scale your existing licenses. your application infrastructure with confidence and agility. 22 Microsoft Game Stack | 23 XBOX Trusted Game Identity Frictionless Integration Use a gaming focused, single Xbox Live game services on mobile sign on identity that works across are available a la carte with no Xbox Xbox Live is committed to building a more platforms with privacy controls as Live certification requirement, just inclusive gaming network that connects well as continuously updated choose the features that are right family safety. for your game and comply with gamers across devices, while providing player privacy and on-line safety terms of service. tools that help developers build richer and Vibrant Gaming Community more engaging experiences. Take advantage of Xbox Live’s growing community and This year, Xbox is introducing a new experiences both inside and outside mobile SDK to help developers expand your game, and across devices to enable richer discovery and gamer Xbox game services to iOS and Android. engagement. As Xbox Live expands across console, PC, and mobile devices, we are working towards creating a safer, more inclusive gaming community. aka.ms/gsgxbox

24 PLAYFAB Fast Global Scale Launch sooner, and more cost- Launch smoothly and confidently effectively, than doing it all yourself • Bet your business on a reliable PlayFab is the complete backend platform • Simplify development with full and secure cloud infrastructure that access to all backend services spans 54 data centers worldwide. to build and operate live games. It’s a of from day one • Go global with support for China game services, data analytics, and LiveOps • Monitor and react to game hosted multiplayer services data in real-time tools, all in a unified solution. Real-Time Comprehensive Easily operate your live game with In a world of ever-increasing competition Everything you need in one unified, real-time experiences that are unique for attention, PlayFab provides everything device agnostic solution and targeted you need to launch quickly, optimize • Works across all consoles (Xbox, • Monitor real-time player activity Switch, PlayStation), PC’s, and and respond intelligently with data player engagement, and extend your mobile devices (iOS and Android) driven actions game’s lifecycle. • Manage the entire gamer lifecycle • Deploy content configuration of acquisition, engagement, and changes on-the-fly (rules, triggers, retention from an integrated A/B testing) Build with the platform used by Rainbow Six command control center for your entire team • Configure real-time segmentation Siege, Idle Miner Tycoon, , and and deliver custom experiences with player messaging, leaderboards, many others. tournaments, and commerce. aka.ms/gsgplayfab

26 Microsoft Game Stack | 27 THE PLAYFAB LIVEOPS PLATFORM PRE-INTEGRATED WITH ALL YOU NEED

All thoroughly tested and always up-to-date.

Platforms

• Dashboards • Remote configuration • Reports • Storage • A/B Testing AATC COTET • User generated content • Data warehousing Measure and react Engage players with • News • Event search • Real-time updates in real-time frequent updates • ML-driven insights • Localization support • Import 3rd party data • Integrated CDN

• Serverless scripting • Virtual currencies Engines • Actions ATOATO PAER T COERCE • Item catalog • Rules • Stores • Scheduled tasks Customize experiences Stronger, secure Sell more virtual goods, • Promotions • Webhooks with cloud-hosted logic relationships more easily • Inventory • Admin APIs • Receipt validation • Drop tables • Subscriptions

• Real-time voice chat • Leaderboards • Voice transcription COCATO TPAER • Tournaments • Push notifications • Prize tables • Foster healthy player Build social experiences • Matchmaking • In-game messaging communities with cross-platform play • Server orchestration • Guilds / Clans • Gifting / trading

• Authentication • Player profile • Support • Banning • Real-time segmentation • Roles and permissions

28 Microsoft Game Stack | 29 VISUAL STUDIO DIRECTX

Visual Studio is Microsoft’s best- and evaluate variables and complex Microsoft DirectX is the choice to make modern GPU hardware on Windows in-class integrated development expressions whether you’re running for the highest performance 2D and 10 PCs and Xbox One. The extensive environment. When it comes to game within the engine editing environment 3D graphics and multimedia. DirectX features and deep platform development, the Visual Studio family, like Unity Editor or if you’re debugging 12 is faster and more efficient than any integration of DirectX provide the including Visual Studio, Visual Studio an externally managed DLL your previous version. 12 enables power and performance needed by Code, and Visual Studio for Mac, project uses. richer scenes, more objects, more the most demanding games. empowers you to create amazing complex effects, and full utilization of aka.ms/gsgdirectx No matter the language or the OS games on the platform of your choice you’re programming with, when you while targeting the broadest range need to collaborate, Visual Studio’s OTHER PRODUCTS IN THIS GUIDE of devices. Live Share will instantly share your • Azure DevOps • Microsoft Store Whether you’re using DirectX, Unity, project with a teammate. Co-edit and aka.ms/gsgazuredevops aka.ms/gsgstore Unreal or Cocos to create games and co-debug while sharing audio, servers, • Azure Spatial Anchors • Mixed Reality immersive experiences for your users, terminals, diffs, comments, and more aka.ms/gsgspatialanchors aka.ms/gsgmr Visual Studio provides a powerful set without teammates needing to clone a • Creators Program • Mixer of tools for developing and debugging repo or set up their environment. aka.ms/gsgxblcp aka.ms/gsgmixer your code, enabling you to identify • DirectML • Orleans And when you need to use the cloud, issues quickly and efficiently directly aka.ms/gsgdirectml aka.ms/gsgorleans Visual Studio can connect to Azure from within the editor. • GamePass • Partner Center services directly from within the IDE aka.ms/gsggamepass aka.ms/gsgpartnercenter Take advantage of the AI-powered itself, making it easy and efficient to • GitHub • Power BI IntelliCode to get bespoke code build out scalable solutions for any aka.ms/gsggithub aka.ms/gsgpowerbi completion recommendations based game type. • Havok • Simplygon on your . Set breakpoints aka.ms/gsghavok aka.ms/gsgsimplygon aka.ms/gsgvisualstudio • ID@Xbox • UWP aka.ms/gsgidatxbox aka.ms/gsguwp • Microsoft Office • Visual Studio App Center

30 aka.ms/gsgoffice aka.ms/gsgappcenter Microsoft Game Stack. Achieve More. aka.ms/microsoftgamestack