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Sega and Microsoft have announced they’re working together on a new “strategic alliance” that will see the former use the latter’s Azure cloud platform to create new games.
In a press release (spotted by Gematsu), the companies declared that they’ve come to an agreement “in principle” that will “explores ways for SEGA to produce large-scale, global games in a next-generation development environment built on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.”
According to the release, the partnership would allow Sega to press on with what it’s calling a ‘Super Game’ initiative. This will see the company work on “new and innovative titles where the key focuses are ‘Global’, ‘Online’, ‘Community’ and ‘IP utilization’.” Exactly how is still rather vague, but the company says the move will allow them to “effectively adapt to diversifying work styles’ and ‘potential infrastructure changes.’
There’s a statement on the agreement from Sega president and CEO Yukio Sugino. “By considering a strategic partnership with Microsoft, we seek to further advance our game development so that our titles can be enjoyed by fans all over the world; in this regard, we aim to build an alliance that utilizes both SEGA’s powerful game development capabilities and Microsoft’s cutting-edge technology and development environment.”
However, we should note that this partnership doesn’t necessarily mean future Sega games like the Yakuza series will become exclusive to Xbox. Back in 2019 Microsoft and Sony announced a similar partnership with Sony also making use of the Azure platform. Nevertheless, Josh had some fun with some crossover ideas in his feature here.
