Case Study: The Coalition achieves a 700-core Azure "virtual supercomputer" and ships 2 AAA games in 1 year with Incredibuild

The Coalition Transforms Azure VMs into a 700-Core Incredibuild “Virtual Supercomputer”, Releases 2 AAA Games in 1 Year

The Coalition Studio, Microsoft’s Vancouver-based AAA game developer behind the Gears of War franchise, faced severe productivity bottlenecks from Unreal Engine 4 shader compilation and level loading—tasks that could take up to 30 minutes to open a level and cost developers large portions of their day. With over 100 UE4 users and external outsourcing partners lacking dedicated build capacity, the studio needed a scalable way to accelerate shader and code builds during long production and crunch periods. Incredibuild was selected to address these challenges.

Incredibuild deployed its process-level virtualization on Microsoft Azure, turning dozens of 64‑core VMs into a 700‑core “virtual supercomputer” that appeared local to The Coalition Studio’s production environment and cut shader and code compilation times dramatically. The solution also delivered short‑term bursts of capacity—about 160 cores for a partner via site‑to‑site VPN—letting small vendors accelerate work without buying hardware. By using Incredibuild on Azure, The Coalition Studio sped up iterative build cycles (often producing multiple builds per day), reduced level load waits, and helped the studio deliver two AAA titles in one year.

The Coalition Studio

Joe Vogt

IT Manager