GDC Europe 2013 adds Microsoft, Google, App Annie vendor sessions

With GDC Europe 2013 less than two weeks away, organizers have rounded up several notable vendor sessions, including new talks from Microsoft on its 'Commitment to Indie Success' and cross-platform talks, Google's Dev Day, Blackberry 10 porting and gaming strategy tips, and App Annie's mobile analytics talk. GDC Europe will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany -- just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event, with all GDC Europe passes also guaranteeing entrance to Gamescom. The Google-sponsored, programming-focused 'Google Developer Day' on Tuesday August 20th now has a full schedule listed, and will go over getting the most out of Google's Cloud, Play service, and Mobile App Analytics, along with showing developers how to attract the most valuable users and how to retain them. Microsoft will sponsor two freshly announced sessions; the first is entitled 'Be What's Next: Microsoft's Commitment to Indie Success.' Microsoft evangelist Kristina Rothe joins Flaregames' Gunnar Lott (former EIC of GameStar), as he shares how Royal Revolt reached 1 million downloads on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 in just four weeks. Microsoft's second session with evangelist Rothe will be 'Building Tomorrow's Blockbuster Today Across Phones, Tablets, and PCs.' Joined by Dlala Studios CEO Anthony James Grand-Scrutton, he will discuss how to design, build, and publish your game in the most effective way, as he did with space-based physics adventure Jansky!. In the App Annie-sponsored 'Analytics for Achieving Mobile Gaming Stardom,' company CEO Bertrand Schmitt "will divulge growth opportunities for games, the most successful game apps and publishers, and how to best leverage the abundance of app data" for the Apple App Store and Google Play. Also of note, a pair of Blackberry-sponsored, programming sessions will focus on 'Porting your game to BlackBerry 10' with application development consultant Pratik Sapra and 'Building Your Gaming Strategy for BlackBerry 10' with global head of gaming Anders Jeppsson and senior gaming consultant Ramprasad Madhavan. These talks join other vendor sessions including GenAudio Inc's 'AstoundSound: True 3D Spatial Audio Processing for Games,' and Havok's 'Project Anarchy Introduction: First Steps in Creating a Mobile Game with Havok's Free Mobile Engine' and Redefining the MMO: A Case study of how Neowiz CRS Reinvented the MO Genre in their Upcoming Title, Project Black Sheep.' Finally for vendor sessions, GDC Europe will see Millennial Media's 'Build to Grow: Develop Your App with Monetization in Mind,' Perforce's 'Versioning Everything with Perforce!,' and NXP's 'Connecting Real World with Virtual World Powered by NFC' sponsored sessions throughout the three-day event. Attendees can plan ahead for these and the other 80-plus sessions using the online schedule builder, and they can also browse the list of exhibitors appearing on the GDC Europe Expo Floor using the current floor plan. Online registration for GDC Europe is still available, with individual savings for VIP and All Access Passes compared to onsite prices. Group admission discounts are also available. For all the latest news on GDC Europe, subscribe for updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS. Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech.