SEGA to partner with Microsoft and use Azure for game development

SEGA announces a ‘strategic alliance’ with Microsoft. The Japanese game company wants to use Microsoft’s Azure cloud technology for future games. That should make large online game worlds possible.

SEGA speaks in an announcement about a mutual cooperation with Microsoft, but few concrete details are given. The emphasis seems to be on SEGA’s use of the Azure cloud platform. The partnership with Microsoft does not have to mean that SEGA works exclusively on Xbox games. Xbox is not mentioned in the announcement and the Azure platform is also used by Sony, for example.

Sarah Bond, corporate vice president of the Xbox division, will lead the partnership from Microsoft, according to a tweet. She says she’s excited to be working with SEGA to “create new gaming experiences by leveraging the power of Azure.” Microsoft has not announced the partnership further.

According to SEGA, the collaboration is focused on its strategy for the medium to long term. It should enable the company to deliver on its ‘Super Game’ initiative. Under that name, SEGA claims to be working on innovative games with the keywords global, online, community and ‘use of trademark rights’.

It is not yet known how SEGA intends to deploy Microsoft’s Azure data centers. An example of a game that uses this is Microsoft Flight Simulator. The detailed game world in that game is only possible through the use of Azure data centers. The game runs locally on Xbox consoles, but the game world includes 2 petabytes of geographic data, which can be loaded via the cloud.