Technology Record - Issue 22: Autumn 2021

163 now consuming and creating more content than ever before,” says Crownshaw. “Personalisation has also improved, so have workflows around content distribution sped up incredibly, with the ability to use the cloud to deliver video at higher resolutions and latency resilient live experiences to people on their phones. There has been an acceleration to the point that the industry is probably five years ahead of where it thought it would be. The challenge now is identi- fying appropriate workflows that can exploit the benefits of the cloud and harnessing even more advanced technology like augmented reality in a scalable way” The rapid and profound transformation of the industry also has implications for the way in which consumers are perceived. By bringing together the disparate information they have about their customers in a single, consistent view, media companies can better understand both the content they want to see and how they want to see it. “One of the workflows that I think the cloud is providing is to defragment social fabrics,” says Crownshaw. “Many people have multiple profiles on different social media platforms, but media companies want to understand you as an individual customer. At Microsoft we’ve been leveraging Xbox technology and the dig- ital community it drives. By leveraging a single unified user profile we get a complete view of the customer across those platforms, which allows us to provide a connected, informative, digi- tal world to them. This keeps customers more involved, and it keeps them coming back.” This example is just one of the ways in which the gaming industry has begun to have an influ- ence over more traditional forms of media. Once regarded as being separate from the mainstream, gaming has become an important and disruptive force within the media landscape. This is not only the case in distribution, but also in creation. “Gaming has brought more freedom to the cre- ation and distribution of media, from beginning to end,” says Crownshaw. “In traditional, linear broadcasting, it would take days, weeks or even months for a visual effect to be inserted into a film. But with game engine technology, this MED I A & COMMUN I CAT I ONS “The industry is probably five years ahead of where it thought it would be”