[MUSIC].
>> Hey, everyone. Today we are talking about Cloud gaming.
We're going to learn how it works,
different platforms, what games are on it? Who's using it?
How they're using it? How it's useful now
and how will be useful in the future and we're doing
that to see basically how
our game development journeys will fit into it.
Maybe we'll learn about it and think not for me.
I don't need to put my games on these platforms,
I don't need to think about it.
More likely there might be games
that we're going to be making in the future that will
fit well into Cloud gaming if
these platforms become very common and very standard.
It'd be great to know ahead of time how to put our games onto it,
how to go about that because
at the moment I have no idea how to do it personally.
I don't know how I would do it and I
think that the first step is knowing
when we want to do it and how
to do it so that when the time comes,
we're able to and we're at least knowing what direction to go in.
We're going to start off our segment by
watching some videos about Cloud gaming,
just getting a better grasp on what
Cloud gaming is and how
it works so that we can understand the next step,
which is the development part.
This is a partnership with Microsoft Azure.
This is why we're talking about it is
because they have a new program.
I think that they started accepting
beta testers to the program in January,
and I think you can still sign up for beta.
You can apply to the beta program and if you get in,
there's a lot of benefits,
like you get credits towards Microsoft Azure, you get,
I think a free year of PlayFab of the paid part of PlayFab,
which is the next tier up.
They're also there to help
walk you through things where you get stuck,
answer questions and if you are going into Cloud game development,
they are there to take feedback from you if you're not happy with
things and they're going to be using their feedback
to make their programs and platforms better.
I think that's cool that we can expect
even better services and
platforms for Cloud game development in the future.
With that, let's get started.
Here's the ID@Azure's landing page that you can get from that link.
Some of the things that they point out is you can develop
faster so there's $5,000 in Azure credits, that's quite a bit.
Free Azure PlayFab standard plan for two years,
that's more than I thought even.
Free multiplayer services, including PlayFab Party networking,
voice chat, PlayFab Matchmaking,
and PlayFab Lobby up to included limits.
So you basically have
a wider range of testing space for these platforms.
I'm already curious of these things having free access for
a couple of years is like makes it even more enticing.
I don't know if you guys have tried multiplayer before or any
of these things that they mentioned networking,
voice and chat, matchmaking, lobby.
That stuff is really complicated to
put together independently and you
still have to pay for
a hosting service for that or servers for that.
The thing about that is like
if you're paying for your own servers,
it's expensive to set up even if nobody plays it.
It's really cool to have tools like this
that you can try it out for free,
see how it goes,
and then you can always migrate away from it if you don't like it,
but it's going to be more cost-effective
to experiment with this than it would be to do your own thing,
which is also going to be likely more work.
Really cool that they're offering that, their work is smarter,
not harder curated solutions, architectures,
and use cases, curated
educational resources for all levels of Cloud experience.
If you don't know much about it,
they're there to help answer questions.
If you do, if you're familiar with Cloud game development,
they're there to give you more complex answers
to more complex things that you're doing.
They have training modules,
code samples from GitHub,
case studies from game developers,
example solutions, architectures,
and use cases. Very cool.
I actually signed up to this program
and I've only just started to get into it,
but I'm looking forward to learning more about this.
Support along the journey.
Here's why I was talking about that they have
people that you can speak to,
talk to support from Azure Rapid Response,
ticket at PlayFab support,
exclusive office hours, and expert sessions.
They do give you a lot of support.
I think it's definitely worth checking
out if this is something that's up to your alley.
This is a free program, by the way,
you don't pay anything for this, this is free.
They give you free access to things.
Some of PlayFab,
like multiplayer services,
are paid but if you have two years free,
it's definitely cool to experiment with it at least for two years.
If you got something that's working well,
you can figure out the pricing at
that point or migrate away if you don't like their pricing,
it's a great way to experiment for sure.
Idea at Xbox is a similar platform
for if you want to get your games on Xbox.
I don't know if anyone's done that before,
this is a program to help you with that.
You do have to apply for it.
If they like your game,
they will bring you into the program and help
you get your game on Xbox.
In a similar way,
the ID@Azure if you apply to
it and if you have a rough game idea,
I think that they're pretty open at this point so
don't feel like you need to have like an amazing game.
But if you have something and you have an idea and you
want to start looking into it further,
you can apply and if
they think this is something that you might benefit from,
then they'll bring you on board and
help you with anything Cloud gaming related.
They work well together if you're doing
Xbox or if you're doing this
and you have a similar idea of what they are.
That's a little bit about the ID@Azure.
We'll watch some videos on this in a bit.
But let's talk about Cloud gaming first
>> You have games that you own and
you want to play them elsewhere.
You may not have a gaming computer,
but you need to have a computer.
>> Okay.
>> You just pay Nvidia for
the privilege of being able to play it anywhere.
Or you don't pay, there's a free tier,
and if you do pay it's only five bucks a month.
>> There are several services other than Nvidia's GeForce,
now, and Google Stadia.
[MUSIC]
>> The biggest changes are pretty much going to be upgrades to
the services and I guess getting some more game partners on board.
But the ones that are probably going to make
the biggest splash are going to be
Sony and the Amazons because they
have some big things in the pipeline.
>> This is interesting. We have learned a lot
today from our Cloud gaming research session.
We know that there's a number of
platforms that offer Cloud gaming services.
There's major tech companies who have
these platforms more and more coming, popping up.
We even are seeing them come from
non-gaming companies like Netflix,
which is very interesting.
We know that they operate in different ways.
Some of them do require you to
buy the game or have subscriptions to the game.
But there's also the option to use
a steam library to have access to your library of games,
then pay a subscription to play those games on devices that
you otherwise wouldn't be able to like
a phone or tablet so that's pretty cool.
I personally am excited about Cloud gaming because I
am all about reaching new people who may not
have taken an interest in gaming
because imagine if they were people
who didn't watch movies
because they thought that movies weren't made for them.
You'd be missing out on something that could be so interesting and
thought-provoking and make you happy
and make you see things in new ways or inspire you.
I love the idea of more people taking an interest in gaming.
To overcome the initial cost of getting into gaming,
that is buying a console or
a gaming computer, that's a great thing.
Cloud gaming is able to offer that to people.
We also know depending on the platform,
different devices are offered
so you may be able to play on a phone,
you may be able to play on a TV,
you may be able to play on a console or a computer,
you may even be able to play on a very old out of date computer,
but play more complex games on it through Cloud gaming.
But there's a lot of different options and it depends on
which platform for Cloud gaming that you're using.
Some major titles across the different platforms,
different games on different platforms,
and it's something that seems to be growing and growing,
and I'm excited to see where it goes.
As for ideal Azure,
they offer a program to help onboard you and give you
resources for developing for Cloud gaming.
They also have tools like Azure and PlayFab,
which they do give credits for,
but they will give you access to all types of learning so
that you can figure out how and
what it takes to make games for Cloud gaming.
Personally, that's important to me
because I can figure out the work that would go
into building for Cloud gaming so I can
evaluate whether or not it's worth doing for a game.
For example, I'm currently going to be releasing my game or
desktop on through Steam if it's not too difficult.
I'd love to be able to reach new people through Cloud gaming.
Knowing what goes into that would be
the first step and even considering it, basically.
It might be a lot of work, in which case I can be
like this is give me a lot of work but there's a lot of interest.
A lot of people like the game. Let's put
some resources towards building it out for Cloud gaming,
or maybe we'll find out that it's really not that hard and I
could reach so many more people without that much effort.
I'm personally excited to
learn more about Cloud gaming and developing for it,
and I'm definitely going to be factoring that into
my decision-making on how I'm releasing my games.
Thank you guys for joining in on our Cloud gaming segments.