Illyriad Games CEO James Niesewand has confirmed the power of Microsoft’s Azure cloud in an interview explaining why the studio chose to use the cloud for the Xbox One port of Age of Ascent.
While talking about why the studio chose to use Microsoft’s Azure over other services, including some of their own solutions, Niesewand stated that there were three main reasons that the cloud was the superior option: The studio was already familiar with Microsoft technologies, Microsoft themselves were supportive of them, and lastly, Microsoft’s decision to open-source .NET and ASP.NET made it a “no-brainer.”
Niesewand said that Age of Ascent needed the power to seamlessly cope with heavy player traffic, which could quickly jump from 500 players to 50,000 if different clans suddenly declared war. This meant that they would need to bring in additional servers as quickly as possible without it negatively affecting the gameplay. Microsoft’s Azure ensures that they can do this.
When asked if it was true that the Azure cloud could provide more computing power for Xbox One, Niesewand replied “Yes, it is absolutely true.” He feels like more developers are turned-off from using Microsoft’s cloud because while it is powerful, it is also new and difficult in the sense that “it requires a very different mindset to your typical programming model.” Many developers also use game engine tools that aren’t well equipped for cloud infrastructures.
Source: WCCF Tech
Jennifer is a games journalist, former games journalist and PR Manager at Gearbox. They contributed 234 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: went on to write for Windows Central and later managed PR for Gearbox Software.