Cross-posted from the blog here.
It has been a while since our last update. You’ve given us some strong feedback that you would prefer to see us focus on a smaller number of features delivered more quickly, and to take more time to address some of the feedback and issues you’ve raised with the current product.
In response to that we’ve taken some time to address a large number of your smaller requests. They’re way too numerous to list here, but examples include adding catalog version to receipt validation APIs; fixing a case where the Multiplayer Server build analytics page stuck in an endless loading screen; updating bulk editing consumables so that consume by time could be set to less than two seconds.
Addressing these kinds of issues will remain a high priority for us so please keep sharing them on the Bugs section of our forums.
We’ve also been busy delivering new features. Here’s what’s new:
- Multiplayer Servers available in South Africa, in particular Dv2 virtual machines, allowing for improved latency and experiences for this rapidly expanding market.
- Matchmaking is publicly available and now supports back-filled tickets, allowing you to re-fill open slots if players leave mid-game.
- Party accessibility and translation services are in preview in 20+ languages, making it easier for players to communicate with each other.
- Party C++ SDKs are available for more platforms, including PC, Xbox, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation, so you can connect players with low-latency networking and chat anywhere.
- Secure Game Center authentication, allowing you to authenticate players on iOS devices using their GameCenter credentials in a secure way.
- New Push Template APIs, these new APIs for Push Notifications enable you to Delete, Create, Save, and Send Push Notification Templates.
- PlayFab Explorer, is an integrated Game Manager experience that allows direct data access to events for ad hoc queries.
- New Navigation for Game Manager, we’ve modernized the user experience, given you more flexibility, and improved usability. This new style is inspired by the Fluent design language adopted across Microsoft.
- Improved onboarding experience, for any feature that you are not currently using Game Manager now provides notes on prerequisites needed with links, short explanation of groups, and links to the quickstart guide.
- Vanguard Outrider, a demo game we built to let you test PlayFab. It's a clicker simplification of a looter shooter online game. You can use this to try store segmentation, change title data, or get CloudScript examples.
- Ability to bill Azure enterprise agreements, so if you are already using an Azure service you can use similar credits and billing instruments with PlayFab.
- Contact PlayFab Support, gives you the ability to contact PlayFab Support directly within Game Manager. The ability to request urgent support through this form will be coming soon.
- WriteTelemetryEvents API, which sends batches of events to PlayFab Explorer, bypassing PlayStream to increase scale and reduce costs.
For the rest of this calendar year we’re going to be working on the following:
- PlayFab in China. Coming this holiday, PlayFab is coming to mainland China starting with Multiplayer Servers and more PlayFab features to come shortly after.
- Server Tags. A management feature for Multiplayer Servers simplifying management of server allocation. This is especially geared towards build-to-build upgrades and reducing the chance of any player interruption as you update your multiplayer servers.
- Billing details page for Multiplayer Servers and Party. These pages allow you to see your spend on a daily basis.
- Updated Multiplayer Server UX. Management experiences for Linux builds and additional graphs for smarter administration.
- C# CloudScript. This brings three new capabilities (1) Ability to write CloudScript in C# as well as Javascript (2) Ability to debug CloudScript (3) Ability to write queued CloudScript functions that can run for extended periods of time since we asynchronously wait for it to complete
Looking into the first half of next calendar year some of the features we’re hoping to bring to you include:
- PlayFab in China. We will be enabling the rest of the PlayFab suite throughout 2020.
- Monetization and User Generated Content (UGC) services move from private to public preview in 1H CY2020. Monetization provides redemption, wallet and inventory capabilities while UGC provides highly scalable catalog plus content moderation features and ratings + reviews. These services are used to power the Minecraft Marketplace and the Mixer Sparks system supporting millions of transactions and consumption of user generated content.
- Insights. The next rollout of insights will give you significantly more control over your data, analytics system and environment. Insights will not only allow you to choose how long you retain data and how much power you want behind your queries, it will also open up multiple new ways to access data including connecting popular visualization platforms or your favorite SQL IDE.
- General availability of Multiplayer Servers, Party, Matchmaking, and an updated Leaderboards service. These capabilities are available today as previews. As we complete self-serve experiences and further incorporate customer feedback we will make these services generally available to all PlayFab users.
Acting on your feedback to focus on delivering the most valuable features to you more rapidly inevitably means there are features that will have to wait till later. As a result of this we are deprioritizing the following features: Pubsub; Churn prediction; PlayFab AppCenter Private Preview. We do not currently anticipate delivering these features within the next 12 months.
As always, while these updates reflect our aspirations for upcoming features, please remember that these features and timelines are subject to change without additional notice. If there are additional features you’d like to see added to our roadmap in the future, please vote on or add to the Feature Requests section of our forums.
