Let’s take it to the next level – Collaborating with Microsoft in games

Microsoft…we’re one of the big companies that has a variety of offers for game developers. But it boils down to you getting the best possible storyline and experience to your game, getting the active users and at the end of the day – making it sustainable, getting revenue for your game.

Reach out to our local Finnish developer evangelism team at @msdevfi and if you’re a startup you can also connect with Toni, Drazen and Mikko through @bizsparkfi

You focus on your game – let us worry about infra and scalability

We all know you have your hands full and there are a lot of things to do before you launch your game. So why not focus on your main task of creating a good game and a good backend service for it. Let us handle updating servers, virtual machines and enable the scalability for the game. It doesn’t really matter if you need a Windows or Linux machine – you don’t need to be fully on the Microsoft stack to get the support.

Through our BizSpark startup program, you’ll get by default 130€ worth of credits monthly to use on Microsoft Azure, our cloud service. It’s a great start but when you scale you’ll need more – we’ll be able to support you with 120 000$ / year through BizSpark Plus. Got interested? Reach out to our local Finnish team @BizSparkFi and we’ll help you get started!

Servers, Virtual Machines are just a small part of the services you can grab from Azure – maybe you’re interested in Load Testing your game or learn from Miniclip on how they’re using game analytics from Azure. You might also check out this great blog post by Lee Scott Using BigData & Azure in your games to gain the advantage to understand what questions you need to ask yourself when thinking of analytics. 

Tap into the user base on Xbox Live and Xbox One

We all know that there is a great community of gamers on Xbox Live and that it has features like achievements that help improve the retention of your game. ID@Xbox enables indie developers to self-publish games to Xbox One and Windows 10 with Xbox Live. This give you the possibility to integrate with the Game Hub, Achievements, Activity Feed and more.

”ID@Xbox is such a great program for small and medium-sized developers.

It has definitely brought us into a closer, more personal relation with a major platform owner and opened up multitude of possibilities. The possibility to access technical documentation, SDKs, dev forums etc. is a great asset to have in any stage of development. We are happy to belong to the program." – Janne Mustonen, CEO, Bind

Indie developers can apply to the ID@Xbox program and when accepted into the program, receive access to Xbox One development, development kits and the possibility to connect your game to Xbox Live, let it be on Xbox One or Windows 10. You can apply directly at www.xbox.com/id or reach out to our local team in Finland to have a chat about it @msdevfi

Let’s grab a cup o coffee – We’re in Espoo and all around Finland

I love working in a global company and looking how Finnish success stories rock the global market. But even more I love to sit down with the Finnish teams and get to know them. Together we then look into how can we leverage the muscles of a big corporation to take over the world, a bit ambitious but that’s how we like it.

As you might guess, there are a lot of Finnish teams out there that we work with, some in really early stages, some just published and some who have already made a statement in the industry and are household games…at least in our houses.

Having this relationship allows to better understand what you want to accomplish and find new channels to get you more support, visibility in Microsoft owned channels (for example Store, social media and newsletter promotions) and provide you with a local shoulder to cry on, when the times get tough.

"Working with Microsoft Finland has been awesome and we are also looking forward to continue our co-operation with our next title!" - Jarkko Paalanen, Business Development Director, Fingersoft

Reach out to our developer evangelism team at @msdevfi to get started. And if you’re a company less than 5 years old, you might want to connect with our startup program to get some free benefits, no strings attached, @bizsparkfi

Our team (@msdevfi) is quite diverse, we have @toniperamaki on startups, @l3mondrop on Azure, @jn1974 on Windows/Xbox, @juhaniv on business development and me (@diggthedrazen) helping teams navigate in this magical world of Microsoft - finding the right people and services to help you on your world domination mission.