[MUSIC]
>> Hi, I'm Tammy Levine,
and I'm here with Sarah Bond to
talk about game development.
Sarah runs the Gaming
Ecosystem Organization within Xbox,
and it's a pretty new org,
less than a year old,
and already doing amazing things.
But Sarah, you have to tell
us the origin story for this team.
>> Well, you know Tammy when you ask me like that,
that I'm going to tell you, because it's one of
my favorite stories to tell.
When I started at Microsoft,
I was doing a ton of work with
game creators and developers of all sizes.
They would always tell me that they could
see the opportunity that comes from
working with our platforms
creatively, technically, and commercially.
But they would also say that,
it was sometimes hard to figure out how to
fully seize that opportunity
because game creation is hard.
It's the only medium that
brings together art, creativity,
while also just pushing
the very edges of tech on fidelity,
latency and how much
Cloud Compute they really require to render a game.
In a lot of ways that's what we love
about gaming at Microsoft
because it makes us better.
The tools and technologies we build are constantly
improving because of what we
learn from game creators and developers.
About a year ago, I was sitting down,
I was talking with Phil Spencer who runs
Xbox and Satya about what I was seeing, and
we realized that what we had to do was create
a dedicated engineering organization that looked
at all of our tools and services across Microsoft,
and really thought about how we were improving them,
enhancing them, and bringing them together
to meet the needs of game developers.
That's exactly what we ended up doing,
which is how we ended up having
the Gaming Ecosystem Organization.
It's been a great ride honestly, fun year,
busy year as you can imagine,
but really, really amazing.
>> Well, that mission Sarah,
that is the reason I joined Microsoft,
and that's why when you started
telling me about that opportunity of
reaching out to game developers and
helping make their lives easier and better,
I jumped right in.
I fell in love with it, because for
20 years I've been working
with developers at EA, Konami, Ubisoft,
developers who are all over
the world making games on every genre,
for every platform, and facing
all those challenges you just described. Because
we know that game creation can come from anyone, anywhere,
if they have the right tools.
Today's modder can become
tomorrow's hottest developer when
they have the chance to do so.
>> Yeah, that's one of the things I love about gaming,
is that effect that almost anyone
can learn how to create
a game and create something that the world can enjoy.
That's what I love about Build,
because Build is all about developers.
One day might be all about game developers.
That's what we're all about,
is empowering developers to create something amazing,
and really democratizing game
development, so that anyone,
even from their own kitchen table,
can figure out how to
build a game and share it with the world.
>> Totally. That engineering work I
feel is more important now than ever.
Because last year we really saw that
technology is essential in
improving our lives, especially games.
I don't know about you.
Well, you have little kids, so I'm
sure you have the same experience,
which is that gaming really saved my family last year.
We have family all over in different places.
It's not just that it was about entertainment,
it was the means by which we were able to connect with
that family and friends in
a time when we couldn't really do that otherwise.
>> Yeah. Gaming has been a lifesaver for me too.
What I'm really struck by actually is how it's
keeping families together around the globe.
The other day I was talking to a friend of mine.
He's here in the U,S,, his whole family is back in
South Africa and he's super close to his nephew,
but they haven't been able to see each other in person
for this whole year because it's just dangerous,
frankly, and really hard to be traveling,
especially internationally on a long-haul flight.
So what they've been doing is they've
just been playing games together.
I love just hearing the stories about it,
about how they get to have fun,
they get to do something together, but also,
his nephew's chatting to
him over chat about all the stuff
that maybe he might
not want to chat with everybody else about,
and they get to actually have that conversation.
He can be an uncle in that way.
That's what I love about gaming,
is it's really keeping us
together and keeping those connections alive,
friends, family, and loved ones.
That is exactly why gaming is the powerhouse it is.
It's the fastest-growing form
of media and entertainment in the world today,
if you can believe it, and it actually topped
$200 billion in revenue as an industry this last year.
>> Yeah, I totally believe it.
I love that story, Sarah,
because it really captures
that we're not just playing across geographies,
but it really suggests the future we're heading towards,
a future where we're not just playing across distances,
but we're also playing across platforms.
Whether you're on Xbox console, PC, or mobile,
you'll be able to play the games you
want with the people you want,
at any time you want.
I think that's extremely inspiring.
This team, our team,
is the team that's engineering that future.
Azure in particular is
just a great example of
a technology that's enabling that future.
>> Yeah, completely Tammy.
We talk all the time about how we really want it.
We want it to be possible for anyone to play any game,
across any device, or anywhere.
That's what this is about.
The Cloud really is the canvas for
the creativity that is needed to unlock all of that.
The Cloud makes it possible,
if you're making a game, no matter
where that game is going to be played:
Xbox, Nintendo, PlayStation, Switch,
iOS, Android, it doesn't matter.
The power of the Cloud makes
it possible for that to happen now,
which before we had that,
games would be locked more to one device.
That's not the reality that we live in anymore.
That's actually why we've created
the special program called the ID@Azure program.
Because what that does is it's
a program for independent developers,
startup developers, citizen creators,
and people who are just learning to
actually be able to easily access
all the incredible tools and services we have
across Microsoft and our Cloud to build,
manage, and monetize, and distribute your game.
We actually launched that new program,
and announced it last month,
ID@Azure at Game Stack Live, and it's going to
launch and go live this summer.
I am just super,
super excited and pumped to see
the amazing creations that come out of
independent developers and all of
you using Azure to create games.
>> Sarah, I love what you said,
that idea of the Cloud as a canvas for creativity.
I think that is so cool.
There's so much of that to explore in Game Stack Live.
That really was an incredible event.
They had like 50 sessions across six technical tracks.
The range of content there was really impressive,
and I think it would be awesome
if everybody from Build come
and check out the full Game Stack Live conference,
because all of it's available on-demand,
and there's so much to take in.
>> Completely. You guys should totally check it out,
but we're also building on that this week.
Travis Bradshaw, who is the CTO of the gaming vertical,
is actually going to be joining
you all at Build tomorrow in
a live conversation about building games on Azure,
and he's going to be participating
in an Ask The Expert session as well.
I can't wait to see the amazing creations
you all build on top of
Azure and all the services we have.
>> Yeah, totally with you on that Sarah.
If you guys want to learn
about anything we've talked about,
it's all available on developer.Microsoft.com/games.
Thank you Sarah so much for taking the time,
and thank you all for watching.
>> Yeah, thank you everyone.