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Step 2 - Create an account in Partner Center

Before you can test Xbox services functionality or publish a game to the Microsoft Store, you need to create an account and a product in Partner Center.

Watch our video tutorial to learn how to complete the process.

If you would like to provide feedback about this video, select here.

Types of Partner Center developer accounts

When you are creating your Partner Center developer account, you will be required to choose the type of developer account you want to create.

There are 2 types of developer accounts available in Partner Center: Individual and Company

Who should choose individual account Who should choose company account
  • Independent developers whose distribution of apps through the Microsoft Store is not in relation to their business, trade, or profession
  • Small scale creators producing content for non-commercial purposes
  • Individuals creating digital content as a hobbyist, amateur, school, or personal project
  • Independent developers and freelancers whose distribution of apps through the Store is in relation to their business, trade, or profession
  • Businesses and Organizations such as corporations, LLCs, partnerships, non-profits, or government organizations
  • Teams or Groups within a company or organization

    See Developer accounts for additional information.

    Prerequisites

    When you're ready to create an account in Partner Center, you'll need to have the following items on hand. You might want to take a few minutes to gather these items before you start:

    • Primary contact person

      • You'll need to provide the name and company email address of the person you want to act as your primary contact.
      • To help ensure your company's security and privacy, we send email to your primary contact to verify the email address, and to ensure that the email address belongs to your company.
      • After the primary contact verifies the email address, we'll continue our review of the information provided. Verification usually takes three to five business days.

    • Email address

      • The email address must be valid and accessible by you because we'll send a verification code to the address to continue your enrollment.
      • The email address can't contain words like "info," "admin," "email@," or "marketing@..." because those address formats aren't supported.

    • Company accounts have the following additional requirements for email addresses

      • The primary contact email address must be a company work email address OR a Microsoft 365 work account (for example, you@contoso.onmicrosoft.com).
      • The email address can't be a personal address, such as a hotmail.com, live.com, or outlook.com address.

    • Authority to sign legal agreements

      • Ensure that you're authorized to sign legal agreements on your company's behalf because you'll be asked to do so during the enrollment process.

    • Legal business name and address for your company

      • The street address and postal code must match the address on record.
      • Be sure to use Western European characters when you enter the address (for example, enter Athens and not Ἀθηνᾶ) to avoid name-checking errors.

    Personal and business Microsoft accounts

    A Microsoft account is an account used to sign in to your Windows PC, Xbox console, or any of Microsoft’s products and services, including Office, Outlook.com, OneDrive, Xbox Live, Microsoft 365, Family Safety, Skype, Bing, Microsoft Store and MSN.

    A personal Microsoft account is an account an individual registered with Microsoft for personal use of the services or devices listed above. Examples of domains that might be associated with a personal Microsoft account are outlook.com, gmail.com, icloud.com, etc.

    A business Microsoft account is an account created by an organization using a business service that has Azure Active Directory as the authentication and authorization platform. This includes business plans for Microsoft 365 including Outlook Web Access and OneDrive for Business, Microsoft Intune, and Windows devices that are connected to your organization's Azure Active Directory domain, as well as Microsoft Azure resources. Examples of domains that might be associated with a company Microsoft account are onmicrosoft.com, yourbusiness.com, etc.

    Creating an account in Partner Center

    1. Go to the Partner Center registration page in a private window/tab and sign in with a Microsoft account.

    2. Enter the email address you want to use for registration and click Next.

    3. Enter a password for your new account and click Next.

    4. Enter your Country/region and your birth date and then click Next.

    5. An email will be sent to you to verify your email address. Enter the code in the email and click Next.

    6. Verify the account being shown in the welcome screen is the account you want to use and then click Next.

    7. On the Join a program to unlock new opportunities screen, select Windows and Xbox under Looking to partner on and then click Next.

    8. On the Account Information page that appears, select the country/region for your account and specify whether your account type is an individual account or a company account.

      Warning

      You can't change your account type after your account is created. If you're unsure which account type to pick, see Developer accounts for a description of each account type.

    9. Provide your individual information or your company's legal business details depending on whether you selected an individual account or company account.

      If you are creating a company account:

      You can either look up your company profile or enter company information manually. If your company is registered with Dun & Bradstreet, use the DUNS ID to look up your company info. If you want to provide your company details yourself, select Manual.

      If your company is located in Armenia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Uzbekistan, or Russia, and you enter your address manually, we'll validate your address for you. If the address you enter differs from the validated address, we suggest that you use the validated address. Doing so ensures that the elements of the address are standardized as defined by the country/region's postal authority. It also ensures that the address is correctly formatted and can be shipped to.

      You will also need to enter information for the primary contact at your company. The primary contact is the person in your company we can contact about your application (this contact can be you or another person in your company).

      Note

      The email address for the primary contact for your company must be a business email address.

      In some countries and scenarios, you may be required to provide a registration ID number for your business. See Registration ID numbers by country/region for more information.

    10. Click Accept and continue

    11. Enter your payment information in the Registration payment page.

    12. Click Pay now and Register

    Verification of the account information you provide

    When you enroll in a new program in Partner Center or change legal details in your profile, Microsoft verifies the information that you provide, such as your company name, company address, and primary contact details. During this process, Microsoft might send email to your primary contact to request more verification documentation.

    For more information about the verification process, see Verify your account information when you enroll in a new Partner Center program.

    How to check your verification status

    The verification process can take a while, to check your verification status use these steps:

    1. Sign in to Partner Center and select the Settings (gear) icon.
    2. Select Account settings.
    3. Select Legal Info to view your company's legal details, your verification status, your PartnerIDs and also create new Partner Program locations if needed.

    Associate your Partner Center account with an Entra ID

    Once you've created your Partner Center account you need to associate it with an Entra ID to be able to publish your game:

    1. In Partner Center, select Settings -> Account settings -> Tenants
    2. Choose Associate Microsoft Entra ID and pick one:
      • Use existing tenant – sign in as a Global/Account admin for that tenant and select Confirm
      • Create free tenant – follow the quick wizard (opens Microsoft Entra admin center in a new tab), then return and confirm.
    3. While logged in with the account you used to create your Partner Center account, associate your Partner Center account with the Entra tenant from the previous step.
    4. Open Settings -> Account settings -> Users and add an Entra user to use for the global admin role.
    5. Assign the new Entra user to the global admin role.
    6. Sign in with your new user by going to Account Settings -> User management, and clicking Sign in with Microsoft Entra ID.
    7. Use the new Entra user account anytime you sign into Partner Center.

    For more information see Set up a Microsoft Entra ID to sign in to Partner Center.

    Next step

    Step 3 - Creating an initial product definition in Partner Center