>> Hi, welcome to GDC.
We're live here in the Azure booth.
My name is David Holliday.
I work on Azure gaming.
And today, I have with me, Mr. Kevin Gammill.
Kevin, do you mind introducing yourself and what you do?
>> No no no. Thanks David. My name is Kevin Gammill.
I am the general manager of what we
call the Xbox Gaming Cloud Team.
Prior to that, I drove
the end-to-end software development
of the Xbox One X program or Scorpio program.
>> Nice. So, you come from the Xbox heritage yourself.
Did you just ship the Scorpio?
>> Yep.
>> Version?
>> In November.
>> All right. Great. So, you transition from
the console over to what you call it? Cloud?
>> Xbox Gaming Cloud.
>> Xbox Gaming Cloud group.
Okay, is that a new organization?
>> It is a new organization.
As we thought about kind of growing our business.
As Phil got promoted to executive vice president.
Microsoft directly under Satya,
we had to kind of rethink our business.
And by no means, are we getting
out of the business of console and PC.
>> Right.
>> But as you think about the kind of 7.2
approximate billion people we have in the world today,
we think by 2020,
two billion of those will be playing or watching games.
And we really want to be
able to touch every one of those.
And there's a number of ways we can touch them.
One's with our first party titles.
>> Yeah.
>> Minecraft, for example,
touches over 100 million people which is great.
Another one is with our devices.
>> Yeah.
>> So, Xbox continues to be important.
>> Right.
>> We think one of our big areas of potential growth
there is Gaming Cloud and what we do there.
And essentially, that is touching
our end users through
enabling our developers to achieve more.
>> Yeah. So, when you think about the Cloud,
so you come from the Xbox world,
is the Cloud just Xbox or is it for,
you know, a bunch of devices
or how do you how do you view that?
>> Absolutely not. The one thing
I love about the Cloud is again,
it's time to grow our business.
It's a very, what I'll call device agnostic approach.
>> Okay.
>> So, to enable our developers to achieve more,
we need to let them basically
touch every possible device.
>> Yeah.
>> So from a Cloud perspective,
we're going to support
every device out there that's capable
of playing games whether it's PS4,
Xbox, iOS, Android, PC,
Windows Store, Steam store, doesn't matter.
We really want to be a kind of any agnostic approach.
>> So, Nintendo Switch would be one, right?
>> Absolutely.
>> Yeah. Okay. So, that's great.
So, it's not just an Xbox.
How does it feel coming from
the Xbox and being part of that and then
then transitioning to the Cloud
like that? Are you personally a.
>> One of my jobs previously on
Xbox was really the developer ecosystem.
>> Yep.
>> And so, I really really take
a lot of pride and enjoyment out of
enabling developers to essentially create,
show their creativity in their games
and enabling them to be successful.
I really think it's our job as developer support to
enable developers to be successful in
realizing their dreams whatever they are.
>> Yeah. Got you.
Okay. So, it sounds like
Microsoft's gaming heritage goes way back.
>> Yes. It does go way back.
>> And you've been part, from
way back in the beginning too, right?
>> Not as far back as about to go, but yes.
>> Yes.
>> Most people don't know that this,
the first game Microsoft actually shipped
was in 1981 a game called Microsoft Adventure.
I personally never played that game.
A game that came out in 1982.
What I did play was Olympic Decathlon
which was quite fun.
But if you think about our gaming heritage from
a first party studios and
the second party studios perspective,
there's lots of games from Solitaire, you know,
God knows how much money people
wasted playing Solitaire at work,
with Windows 3.0 to flight sim.,
to the games we have today with Minecraft,
Halo, Gears of Wars,
Sea of Thieves which launched this week.
Fantastic game of those you guys haven't played yet.
>> Yeah. Sea of Thieves.
I've seen a lot of good buzz too.
>> Yeah. It's been great.
>> Right. And all those games you mentioned are-.
Do those run on Azure at all or?
>> All are multiplayer first party titles
actually do run on Azure.
>> Okay. So, it can be a Halo coming out of 343.
>> Yeah.
>> The coalition with Gears of War, Forza turned 10.
>> Yeah.
>> Sea of Thieves also runs in Azure.
>> Sea of Thieves too?
Okay. Yeah, that's were massive games.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
Thee's a number of third party ones as well.
>> Okay. Yeah, like a.
>> We got Rainbow Six Siege is probably the best example.
Super successful title.
>> Yeah.
>> I think, you know, they've been out over two years now
and their user base continues
to grow is actually fantastic [inaudible].
>> And that's an interesting concept because the Cloud,
they have updated their game
continuously over the years, right?
>> Yes.
>> It kind of released it as a service model.
And, is a Cloud enabling that?
Or is it like, what's, what's happening that enables [inaudible].
>> Absolutely, Cloud is enabling that.
Back when I was younger and I would buy games,
it was a very linear process.
I would literally go to Camp USA.
>> Yeah.
>> Walk the aisle.
Look at the back of the box.
>> Grab it.
>> Grab it and buy it.
And that would kind of be the end of
the relationship with the developer and the publisher.
Today, with LiveOps and internet connectivity,
that relationship never has to die.
>> Right.
>> And what's great is,
what first started in kind of the
free to play mobile based games.
We're also now finding their way
into the triple A space as well.
>> Yeah, I got you. Okay.
>> But it's really a different approach
to our customers when you really-.
From a game developer and a game publisher perspective,
never lose touch of those customers and it
allows them to listen to them,
iterate quickly and make their game better.
>> Yeah. I've got you. I think I saw the article.
It was like Grand Theft Auto and even a
Rainbow Six Siege making
more money like two or three years later.
>> Yes.
>> And they did when they came out in that
Cloud behind that is powering a lot of that.
>> Yes, exactly.
>> So, I want to go back
to one of the things that you just mentioned there,
you're talking about LiveOps, right?
So, what is LiveOps?
I know everybody hears it but, you know,
for the audience what exactly is LiveOps?
>> Well, for those of you who are at the show,
we have a complete book on that.
The PlayFab Definitive LiveOps.
But essentially, it's a way for both of
the business kind of wing or
the publishing wing as well as
the velvet wing of particular title
to listen very carefully to
their customers and then iterate on
the best way to monetize,
acquire, retain and target new customers.
>> Okay.
So, I can target, how do I target?
What is this whole process look like?
What does it actually doing to
a game when you have LiveOps?
>> No, it's a great example.
So, I'll use retention, for example.
>> Yep.
>> If you have someone
who you've been playing your game for the last couple of
weeks on a daily basis and then all of a sudden
through some artificial intelligence
or some telemetry you have,
you discover that they've
dropped off over the last couple of days.
>> Right.
>> You can send them a push notification.
Asking them to come back and if they come back,
give them some coins or
whatever you want to to
incentivize them to come back to your game.
>> Got you.
>> That's an example of,
kind of, reacquiring a lost customer.
>> Got you.
>> And that's an aspect of LiveOps.
>> So, you really target,
doing specific targeting of people in like
modifying what they see and
do inside the game even, right?
>> Exactly.
>> Yeah. Wow. That's a pretty powerful concept.
So, do you have a tool set for that?
>> Yes. We recently acquired this company called PlayFab.
It's available today.
They're at the show floor actually in
two places. One at the booth here.
>> Great.
>> Which is a kind of one Microsoft booth.
And they have a PlayFab's specific booth in
the south hall. People can see as well.
>> Yeah. Okay. So, PlayFab,
there, you have all LiveOps
tools and they have this handbook.
I saw something about an offer you guys have.
>> Yes.
>> So, what is that all about here?
>> Essentially you get a $99 a month.
Kind of indie subscription offer with
PlayFab plus App Center plus Azure.
It's $2,500 dollar over a year deal for free.
>> for free? Okay.
>> If you sign up with us at aka.ms.gdc.
>> Slash GDC offer. Yeah, I think I saw [inaudible].
>> Yes. Thank you.
>> aka.ms/gdcoffer.
>> GDC offer. Yes.
>> Cool. Okay. So, I go there and I can sign up for that.
>> Yup.
>> That's great. It sounds like
a lot of money's worth of stuff to build.
Is it targeted? What's the targeted ads specifically?
>> Basically, any, any interested developer that wants
to experiment with either App Center, Azure or PlayFab.
>> Right.
>> They can, they can pick it
up and they can start playing with it.
>> And that centers
more on the mobile side of the world, right?
>> Right. Think of App Center
is a number of iOS and Android devices in the Cloud.
>> Yeah.
>> That kind of across
the broad spectrum that
enables developers to essentially,
instead of owning those devices themselves to do testing,
do all of that testing in the Cloud.
So, really enables in quite a bit and not having to
constantly upgrade to the latest version
of the phone to be in iOS or Android.
>> Yeah. That's super powerful, man.
Because you'll running a game across devices is a,
or testing is really hard to do.
>> Right.
>> So, you got all of these devices in the Cloud.
You can just go up and that's pretty interesting.
>> Yes. It's very powerful.
>> Yeah. Okay.
>> So, if I visit the PlayFab booth,
they'll show me this and I can get
this LiveOps handbook and I can get this offer and [inaudible].
>> Yeah. You can get a demo.
They have a really good demo that
shows how they use user segmentation.
>> Yeah.
>> Better acquire and target your users.
So, it is a great place to stop by the booth.
>> Nice. We're sitting in the Azure booth right now.
There's a whole bunch of things happening.
Tell me some of the other stuff that's
like going on here in GDC.
>> So, there's Xbox live section as well.
I can't, I can't see really well back here.
There's a theater for
different presentations which is great.
The mixer folks are here which
were on mixer right now which is fantastic.
So, it is kind of a great one,
Microsoft Azure which I really like.
>> So if you're a developer, will you come here,
you're going to go across a Microsoft tool sets and
mixer and learn a whole bunch of stuff
of PlayFab the whole, whole ball of Azure.
>> Exactly. And if you're interested
in playing some Xbox games,
short trip up the stairs, we have a lobby bar.
>> Right.
>> So, you can get a drink and you can play
some of your favorite Xbox games as well.
>> Got you. Okay. That sounds
good. Another question for you then.
So, how do we think about what's next
like what's coming in
the future like how do you view that?
>> Well, that's great. As we
kind of look at drawing the businesses
I talked about earlier.
We thought, you know, if you think
of the assets Microsoft can
bring to bear and also start with in the gaming space,
you know, we have Havoc, we have
Simply Gone and we have a number of,
of what are called gaming specific initiatives.
>> So, for the audience, what is the Havoc?
>> Havoc is a physics engine
that a lot of games leverage.
And Simply Gone is kind of a smart way to take
a really complex 3D model and
target certain platforms and have that
automatically spit out a kind
of resolution appropriate to 3D model.
>> I got you. So, I make one model [inaudible].
>> Right.
One super high resolution model that's future-proof.
>> Yet.
>> Yes.
>> Get into it for the PC, for a tablet,
for, you know, scale. Okay.
>> Right. That's exactly right.
>> Okay.
>> And we have another other kind
of gaming specific ones.
So as we look in our assets including Xbox
live and what can help us broaden.
One of the other things we looked at was Acquisitions.
So, we looked at PlayFab as well.
So, really from a future perspective,
we're looking getting that building out really
a great set of end to end developer device agnostic,
set of gaming services all built on top of the Azure.
>> Nice. Okay. Okay, so Azure is
a feature platform because I see
a big Azure sign here.
It's pretty good. It's pretty good.
>> Yeah, that's right.
>> Azure is here, GDC.
So you're building or thinking of building services.
So, Microsoft committed to the game and space.
>> Yeah. Huge commitments.
I think you first saw that with
Phil's promotion to executive vice president.
With my team, I'm not going to go into
numbers on how much we expect to grow.
>> Right.
>> We're going to grow quite a bit.
And the fact that we acquired,
there are folks who PlayFab is another kind of
motion that kind of
signals how important we think its businesses.
>> And your team has also been running
your Xbox Live services for a while.
Is that going to play into all of this somehow?
>> Absolutely. Xbox Live's been around since 2002.
>> Yep.
>> And both from a kind of reliability perspective
as well as a compliance perspective which is
really important aspect to our game build.
>> I got you. All right.
>> It's important we're compliant worldwide.
And so that's a muscle we've built over the last 15,
16 years on Xbox Live.
>> Great.
>> That we can apply more broadly to every,
every game developer across a multiple set of
platforms and not just Xbox and PC.
>> Right. But sounds
like a lot of good things for Microsoft's com.
So, if I'm developing today
like you my company how do I get started what do I do?
>> That's great. I would go to www.playfab.com.
>> Yep.
>> You can download the SDK
and you can start to play with it today.
>> Oh, good. Okay.
>> Basically, our pricing model that is mal-based.
And the first thousand mal, is actually FREE.
>> Okay.
>> So, not only can start playing with it,
you can actually start development on
your game without it costing you any money at all.
>> Great.
Okay. Very clear call action PlayFab. playfab.com.
>> Yep.
>> Okay. Very good. The other thing to add to
the audience out here about Cloud gaming features,
any other insights you have?
>> No. I'm just super excited for the future.
I think, I think we have nowhere to go but
up and welcome to GDC.
>> Very good. Thank you,
Kevin, very much for tuning in today. Thanks.
>> Thank you David.
>> All right appreciate it.
>> Welcome to GDC.
>> Okay. Thanks.