Microsoft and Amazon are both appearing at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week with a simple pitch: use our cloud services to build your game. Both companies have been battling to get businesses to switch to the cloud in recent years, and now the focus is truly on game developers during a pandemic that has challenged the norms of creating games.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery few years, the games industry undergoes a transformation \u2014 a reinvention of itself,\u201d says Sarah Bond, corporate vice president of game creator experience and ecosystem at Microsoft. \u201cNew platforms and new technologies make way for new genres, new gameplay and new IP. Today, we\u2019re in the midst of one of those transformative moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amazon agrees. \u201cGame developers are embracing industry-wide transformation,\u201d says Chris Lee, head of game tech services at Amazon. <\/p>\n

While Microsoft and Amazon have been trying to entice game developers over to their cloud services for years, they\u2019re both making an even bigger push in 2022. Amazon is launching AWS for Games today, a collection of AWS services and solutions that will help developers build, test, and even grow their games. At the same time, Microsoft is launching Azure Game Development Virtual Machine to allow developers to build games on powerful PCs in the cloud.<\/p>\n