A report by Romuald Zdebsky from Microsoft at the Winter Nights 2014 conference.

At the Winter Nights 2014 conference, Romuald Zdebsky, Head of the Department of Strategic Technologies at Microsoft, answered several questions to our editorial staff.

Microsoft has named a new executive director. Steve Ballmer was replaced by Satya Nadella. He is a veteran who has worked in the company for more than 20 years. The new head of the largest IT corporation in the world wears glasses, enjoys cricket and loves innovation.

About the difficulties of evaluating, interpreting and collecting game experience – in the article of the chief analyst of Game Analytics Anders Drachen.

The head of Microsoft’s game studios, Phil Spencer, claims that the future of video games lies in the plane of cross-platform entertainment. The manager expressed his point of view in an interview with the Australian website Ausgamers. 

Microsoft Corporation is working on a new cloud gaming service for mobile devices. This service will allow you to stream Xbox games to smartphones and tablets. This is reported by the authoritative portal The Verge.

Microsoft Corporation plans to merge the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store into a single app store. 

The other day Microsoft announced its successes in the mobile field. According to the company, there are as many as 9 million transactions with the Windows Phone Store per day in the world.

Stephen Elop will be appointed Executive Vice President of Microsoft Devices and will be engaged in the further development of Windows Phone, Xbox console and Surface tablet series in early 2014.

Microsoft will pay about $5 billion for the division that creates devices, and another $2.18 billion for Nokia‘s patent portfolio. The software and NSN departments of the Finnish company will remain independent.

The company has launched the Face Plus service, which allows developers to “animate” game characters. To do this, you just need to sit in front of the webcam so that the program can copy your facial expressions.

According to Nikkei, a Japanese daily publication devoted to business issues, Kabam has become a partner of KLab, the developer of the Lord of the Dragons card butler.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will leave his post within the next 12 months. 

Microsoft’s mobile platform was the second most common in Latin America, according to IDC.

Romuald Zdebsky from Microsoft at the White Nights: Mobile Games Conference gave a master class on the capabilities of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 for mobile games and applications.

Specialists of the analytical company Forrester presented a new forecast for the development of the global tablet market for the period 2013-2017. The rapid growth in the number of active devices will continue: from 327 million tablets in 2013 to more than 905 million in 2017.

Many developers of Windows Phone apps have not received download statistics for a month now, according to our colleagues from Pocket Gamer.