Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said it is combining elements of its video gaming and Azure cloud computing businesses to court game developers, an action designed to use the strength of its XBox gaming franchise to gain ground on cloud services leader Amazon.com.
Microsoft said it will start rolling out "Microsoft Game Stack," a group of services that lets game developers do things like host multiplayer games and match players of similar skill levels. The services are designed to work for titles played on any device — including those with operating systems from Microsoft's onetime rivals like Apple and Google.
Microsoft competes against Amazon Web Services division to sell those cloud services. But it has been in the console gaming business with its XBox device since 2001 and had 64 million users for its XBox Live online gaming service. Microsoft also owns titles such as the "Halo," the sci-fi action franchise for the XBox and Windows, as well as "Minecraft," a game that is popular on mobile devices with operating systems from Apple Inc. and Google Inc.