Unity Technologies has teamed up with Microsoft Azure to add the former’s Create Solutions to the Cloud, allowing users to distribute games across Windows and Microsoft Xbox systems.
Marc Whitten, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Unity Create Solutions, said in a blog post that his company’s partnership with Microsoft would offer more cloud-based functionalities across its ecosystem, boost workflows and reliability, and increase productivity.
He explained, stating,
“We are dedicated to creating native capabilities that unlock our tools for more people than ever so that you can take advantage of the advanced compute, storage and reliability that the cloud offers. We believe that this cloud enablement will make it easy for creators around the world to collaborate seamlessly. It will also allow experiences that wouldn’t be possible if limited to just the local resources of either a creator’s machine or a user’s platform”
Numerous cloud-backed services across Unity include DevOps, Digital Twins, Unity Game Services, Parsec, Wētā Digital, and others require cloud workflows capable of global access and use.
The company’s Digital Twins solution also hosts real-time 3D assets and require point clouds, models, and others with high demands on local device resources. Azure’s cloud infrastructure boosts real-time processing, sharing, and visualisation with high-speed data transfers and edge computing.
Really excited with this even deeper partnership with @Microsoft and @Azure . Fun to announce this today with @BondSarah_Bondhttps://t.co/orztu3KJrU
— Marc Whitten (@notwen) August 8, 2022
Azure will also empower content creators using Wētā Digital’s RT3D and hyperrealistic animations with optimised processing times, machine learning (ML), and other intensive workflows.
Whitten continued, stating Microsoft was “already a strong partner with Unity” and that “together we share a commitment to making game and other creators successful.”
He added that 3D interactive experiences from the gaming industry were “quickly moving to non-gaming worlds” and that Unity had been building a “platform-agnostic, cloud-native solution” to support developers and enterprises.
Concluding, Whitten said,
As the need for real-time simulation becomes central to every industry ranging from e-commerce to energy, manufacturing to medical, and more, Unity and Microsoft are building the creator cloud that empowers 3D artists to build and run those experiences on Azure
Whitten’s statements come as Microsoft leverages its Azure cloud computing technologies as a leading metaverse infrastructure solution, namely as firms develop ‘serious gaming’ products to facilitate the rise of the virtual world and interoperability among platforms.
Serious gaming is a conceptualised strategy that aims to build the Metaverse with technologies from gaming firms, including cloud computing, RT3D content, artificial intelligence (AI), digital twins, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), networking, edge computing, and many others.
Nextech AR, a Vancouver, Canada-based metaverse enterprise, also integrated Azure as a data hosting solution for its RT3D assets and digital twins for hybrid events, eCommerce, and other deployable, scalable uses.
