PlayFab provides the back-end game service for Angry Birds Seasons from Rovio.
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PlayFab taps IBM’s Watson AI to understand why gamers keep playing

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

IBM and PlayFab are teaming up to deliver better insights about gamers based on analysis from IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence platform.

Seattle-based PlayFab provides backend services for connected games on mobile devices and PCs. It provides things game developers need to run their games — like player data storage, player relationship management, tournaments, in-game commerce, and leaderboards. IBM will take that data, crunch it, and come up with insights that help developers run their games better. It’s a new way for IBM to participate in what market researcher Newzoo says is a $91 billion market.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.