Microsoft has been on a hiring spree lately, and the latest batch is about the newly formed Microsoft Studios: European Publishing, seeking a Creative Director, an Acquisition Producer and a Development Director.

The three career opportunity ads are actually quite rich in their descriptions of the purpose of the studio. Here are a few relevant excerpts:

We are looking for a dynamic and seasoned Creative Director to guide externally developed products towards design excellence. With an emphasis on hit ‘Games as a Service’ experiences across all Microsoft platforms, this role will help guide teams through the creative process from inception to delivery, ensuring industry defining experiences are created to the highest levels of quality. You will champion Microsoft’s 1st Party vision for externally created product and ensure creative alignment across teams, partners and executive staff. The Creative Director will facilitate bringing the best creative frameworks and process to bare on delivering high-quality franchises that push the best entertainment experiences.

Microsoft Studios, European Publishing is a new group tasked with creating platform defining experiences through highly collaborative partnerships with external developers. While our focus is on European opportunities, our impact will be global with a special emphasis on exploring new business models based on the fundamentals of games as a service. By partnering with the most innovative European developers and delivering the best and most surprising game experiences, we will play a key role in transforming the way consumers engage with our platforms and gaming content.

- Develop a strategy to attract quality installs for our F2P games on our platforms.

- Drive delivery of AAA ‘games as a service’, by directing and managing project development with clear predictability and financial sustainability in partnership with external and internal stakeholders.

Basically we're looking at a publishing studio that will work mainly with third party external partners to produce AAA-quality games using the "games as a service" business model, basically free to play games driven by Microtransactions.

Looks like Microsoft has decided to push the free to play model quite hard, and on both sides of the ocean, as a similar purpose was described by another recent career opportunity ad based at the home HQ in Redmond.