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NCSOFT today announced that it is advancing the development of its upcoming title CINDER CITY through technical collaboration with Microsoft.

At G-STAR 2025 in Busan, Jaehyun “James” Bae, CEO of BigFire Games—NCSOFT’s development studio—and Jeremy Hollett, Corporate Vice President of Customer Reliability Engineering (CRE) at Microsoft Azure, discussed a wide-ranging technical partnership for the project.

CINDER CITY will incorporate Microsoft Azure’s cloud infrastructure and optimization solutions powered by Azure OpenAI, applying technologies such as NPC behavior modeling, content recommendation systems, and real-time load balancing to significantly enhance the player experience.

Jaehyun “James” Bae, CEO of BigFire Games, said, “We expect Azure’s game-optimized technical stability and infrastructure to support the global expansion of CINDER CITY. Beyond development, we aim to create strategic synergy across operations, marketing, and more”

Jeremy Hollett, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, said, “Games today are more than content—they are an industry in which stability and resilience are core competitive strengths. We will actively provide Azure’s technological foundation to support NCSOFT’s titles such as CINDER CITY, which stand out for their innovation and creativity”

CINDER CITY is an open-world tactical shooter currently in development and is scheduled for launch in the second half of 2026. NCSOFT showcased a playable build of CINDER CITY at G-STAR 2025, held from November 13 to 16 at BEXCO in Busan, South Korea.