A New Way for Royalties
Microsoft and its Xbox publisher-partners, such as Ubisoft, are going in on a blockchain-backed royalty program, the latest adoption milestone to drop for the fledgling tech.
Loic Amans, Senior Vice President for Finance and Strategic Planning at Ubisoft, stated:
“The opportunity to collaborate with Microsoft on blockchain use cases, especially in the domain of digital contracts and royalties, is thrilling.”
The tech giant Microsoft is making the switch from the unwieldy manual royalty process to the blockchain in a bid to increase transparency, reduce costs, and save time. With blockchain tech in the picture, Xbox game publishers will be able to view the sales analytics of games and earnings in real-time. With all the data available straight away, game creators can deploy various marketing methods to increase their reach.
In contrast, the same process would take up to 45 days on average using the old manual system, which used spreadsheets to calculate royalties for publishers.
Microsoft Finance Director Rohit Amberker noted that the new system was undeniably optimized:
“After adopting the blockchain solution, even with only one-third efforts, we’re able to run the same royalty operations while providing faster, more reliable service.”
High in Security, Low in Cost
The blockchain solution in question will run on the cloud computing service Microsoft Azure, which the company claims to be the “ideal host” for the system due to its magnitude of scalability.
The fledgling tech has many pros, one being the enhanced level of trust among all stakeholders. The entire process becomes automated, which removes the need for manually recalculating and auditing royalty payments. Security is another strong point due to the nature of distributed ledgers.
Chief Financial Officer of Xbox Tim Stuart said the move was very much so about creating an ecosystem:
“We are developing an ecosystem within the gaming industry that connects developers and publishers to game performance. Providing near real-time access to data greatly improves the process’ effectiveness and insights that lead to a more enriching experience for the partners.”
For now, rights and royalties management is in the crosshairs, but eventually, if this inaugural system is successful, Microsoft might launch further blockchain-based services.
