Microsoft Working on Integrating Azure Cloud Platform for Gaming

At GDC China, Microsoft’s “Cloud Evangelist” Brian Prince revealed just how the company was investing in the cloud environment for the gaming community.

Microsoft has spent billions of dollars developing their Azure cloud service, attempting to capture some of the market share from Amazon’s domination of the cloud marketplace while fending off competitors like IBM, Verizon, and Rackspace.

Microsoft is gearing their Azure platform for developers outside of their .NET framework, enabling gamers to save game states across multiple platforms so they can start on a PC, resume on a mobile phone, save state, and then move to a console if they so desire. It’s very clear that they are trying to tie together console and PC gaming in with their Windows Mobile 7 platform.

Price adds that there will be cloud integration on the Xbox 360. While specific details weren’t provided, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Microsoft move toward a console digital distribution scheme, sort of like Steam or Origin.

While I’m sure no one wants yet another distribution platform, a console system would be pretty cool.