Nintendo and Playstation fans who shop at GameStop are no longer safe from the ever expanding tendrils of Microsoft's Azure cloud platform.
GameStop announced today via press release that they will be integrating apps and services running on Windows Azure to power customer engagement, offering Amazon-like personalised recommendations and even Windows 8 powered customer service kiosks.
This news further solidifies Xbox's position in Microsoft's ecosystem, and should help to shut the mouths of noisy venture capitalists who want Microsoft to siphon off its divisions with smaller margins and fanboys who buy into Forbes haphazard attempts at video game industry analysis.
By further monetizing the data gathered by Xbox, Microsoft can ensure that Xbox remains a staple part of its core business strategy. We'll no doubt hear more about Xbox's position in the Microsoft family at the Windows 10 event on January 21st, but until then enjoy this snippet of news and rest assured, Xbox is going nowhere.
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GameStop (NYSE:GME), a family of specialty retail brands that makes the most popular technologies affordable and simple continues to expand its roster of technology companies and institutions it is collaborating with as part of its GameStop Technology Institute (GTI) business unit. The company announced today at the National Retail Federation’s 104th Annual Convention & Expo its plans to use Microsoft Azure to continue to enhance the in-store engagement of its customers in interactive, informative and entertaining ways.
“Microsoft has always been a fantastic and innovative company for GameStop to collaborate with, both in the technology space as well as with their video game consoles and titles”
GameStop will be one of the first retailers to use Azure, the innovative Microsoft cloud platform, to stream video game and promotional content direct to customer and store associate mobile devices. As a result, customers will be able to view on their smartphones and Windows tablets content (e.g. trailers, promotional materials, etc.) from GameStop’s catalog of video games, providing a digitally immersive shopping experience within the physical store. GameStop’s store associates will be able to access individual information for those customers who have opted in to receive and share information as part of the GTI app, empowering the associate to provide a personalized shopping experience based on the customer’s unique shopping history.
Other GameStop uses of the cloud platform within its stores include streaming video game trailers to a 4K ultra HD TV, and offering an in-store mobile shopping cart that can be used by the customer to facilitate a faster checkout.
“Microsoft has always been a fantastic and innovative company for GameStop to collaborate with, both in the technology space as well as with their video game consoles and titles,” said Jeff Donaldson, senior vice president of GameStop Technology Institute. “We are continuing to work closely with them to discover and aggressively elevate ways to enhance the retail experience for our customers today and in the future.”
“Our collaboration with GameStop shows the types of things that are possible when Azure is used to enhance consumer engagement,” said Tracy Issel, general manager of Worldwide Retail, Consumer Goods, Hospitality and Travel at Microsoft Corp. “GameStop is utilizing our cloud computing technology in their brick-and-mortar stores in new exciting ways, and demonstrating the type of retail technology applications we can build on Azure moving forward."
So the primary take away from all this is that instead of telephoning GameStop to ask about Battletoads, soon you'll be able to do it via an Azure powered human-computer interface simulation, probably voiced by Jen Taylor.
http://www.xboxmad.net/x/gamestop-integrates-windows-azure.html
