


Xbox Research’s mission is to “ enable the magic of gaming for every person on the planet,” and they have an unwavering commitment to making games more accessible. For a business that was always at the cutting edge of game research, this new reality delivered a big blow. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they were no longer able to bring gamers into the labs.

Without that feedback, games don’t launch. To that end, let’s see how Xbox Research leveraged Parsec, Unity’s leading cloud-based remote desktop solution, to scale their virtual playtesting to people across the world by providing nearly zero-latency, high-fidelity connections to physical Xbox machines located in Redmond, WA.Įvery year, over 9,000 gamers are invited to come through Xbox Research’s playtest and usability labs located in Redmond, WA to play games and provide feedback on real-world gameplay, clarity, accessibility, and appeal. Development teams can even use the cloud to collaborate with instantaneous, real-time visual feedback, no matter if they sit on different floors or different countries.įundamentally, studios embrace cloud game development to automate tasks, drive efficiency, and leverage the rich diversity of global talent to deliver higher-quality, more innovative games. We’re experiencing a rapid proliferation of cloud-based 3D asset management, pulling assets out of on-prem content silos and making them available across teams, projects and organizations. We’re seeing core on-prem applications like Version Control Systems (VCS) and workflows like CI/CD move to the cloud to supercharge DevOps agility. Part of that commitment has meant enhancing your game development experience and working together to make it easier to build and distribute your games on Windows and Xbox platforms.Īs we work to fulfill this goal, we continue to witness a cloud revolution in game development. Last year, Unity announced a partnership with Microsoft Azure to bring our Create Solutions to the cloud and develop our cloud infrastructure to better meet the needs of this new global distribution. We now see games of all sizes delivered by talented teams distributed across the globe - and the reason for that is the cloud. Studios no longer feel restricted to having resources centralized in a single, physical space. That’s the reality regardless of industry, but it’s especially true when it comes to game development.
