As current generation consoles near the end of their life-span, certain entities have been acquiring cloud engine companies in order to be at the forefront of technology. Last week we announced that Epic Games have purchased Cloudgine, now we have news that Microsoft has acquired PlayFab. Microsoft corporate vice president of gaming Kareem Choudhry has explained the move as being beneficial to Microsoft’s Azure-powered cloud gaming efforts.

“Many industries are moving to the intelligent cloud, and this trend is true in gaming as well,” Choudhry said. “This means an increasing number of developers are looking to create connected games for mobile, PC and console devices that have a significant emphasis on post-launch operations. However, the cost and complexity of achieving this through custom-built, server-side tools and technologies is high, and PlayFab offers developers a compelling model that scales naturally with their games’ players. “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, which provides world-class server infrastructure, allowing creators to focus on building great games with best-available global reach.”

Azure is indicative of Microsoft’s original efforts back in 2013 when the company wanted to push for a more cloud-based gaming system for the Xbox One. Unfortunately, it was met with a considerable negative response. Let hope this will change in the coming years.