Leveling Up with Google Cloud: PlayStation’s Global Migration to Spanner (Presented by Google Cloud)

Monday, March 9, 2026 3:40 PM to 4:40 PM · 1 hr. (US/Pacific)

Room 2020, West Hall

Lecture

Game & Production Technology

Information

At the heart of the PlayStation™ ecosystem, a mission-critical service is responsible for a single, vital function: confirming every player's access to their games and digital content. For a platform with over 350 million user accounts, this entitlement system must be flawless, instant, and always available. As PlayStation's user base and content library grew, the decade-old legacy data architecture was pushed to its breaking point. Faced with spiraling costs and performance bottlenecks that directly impacted their most loyal players, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) needed more than just a new database—they needed a new paradigm. This is the story of how SIE migrated its planet-scale entitlement system to Google Cloud Spanner, a database uniquely designed for this class of problem, achieving a 10x reduction in storage and a 50% drop in costs, all with zero downtime.

Room Capacity

566

Intended Audience

The intended audience includes CTOs, cloud architects, and engineering leaders managing global-scale legacy systems. The takeaway is that migrating mission-critical data to Google Cloud Spanner eliminates performance bottlenecks and spiraling costs, delivering a 10x storage reduction and 50% savings with zero downtime.

Attendee Takeaway

The audience learns that "planet-scale" legacy systems can be modernized without service interruption. By migrating to Google Cloud Spanner, SIE achieved a 10x storage reduction and 50% cost savings, proving that global consistency and massive efficiency are possible through a cloud paradigm.

Pass Type

Festival PassGame Changer Pass

Type

Partner Session

Available on GDC Vault Later

Video