Halo 4 Team Uses Agile, Cloud-Based Big Data Solution

The Halo franchise is an award-winning collection of properties that has grown into a global entertainment phenomenon. To date, more than 50 million copies of Halo video games have been sold worldwide. As developers prepared to launch Halo 4, they were tasked with analyzing data to gain insights into player preferences and support an online tournament. To handle those requests, the team used a powerful Microsoft technology called Windows Azure HDInsight Service, based on the Apache Hadoop big data framework. Using HDInsight Service to process and analyze raw data from Windows Azure, the team was able to feed game statistics to the tournament’s operator, which used the data to rank players based on game play. The team also used HDInsight Service to update Halo 4 every week and support a daily email campaign designed to increase player retention. Organizations can also take advantage of data to quickly make business decisions.

See the full case study at https://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=710000002102.  This one is pretty interesting. Grin.