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Microsoft investing $700 million in data centre to support cloud service & Xbox Live

zakislam

Member
http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/...ent-in-west-des-moines/article?nclick_check=1 via VG247 and GI.biz

Microsoft will invest nearly $700 million in a new data centre in Des Moines, Iowa.

Microsoft already has a significant data presence in the region, but this $700 million expansion will take the company's total investment to almost $1 billion.

In a statement released to the Des Moines Register, Christian Belady, the general manager of Microsoft's data centre services, said that the expansion, "supports the growing demand for Microsoft's cloud services."

The data centre will support a number of Microsoft's cloud services, but Xbox Live will be chief among them. Since Microsoft's change in strategy regarding DRM and used-game sales, the size of its investment in the cloud is one of the key remaining differences between the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

Sony's most forceful play in cloud computing remains its acquisition of Gaikai, but Microsoft, which has promised 300,000 Xbox Live servers for the launch of Xbox One, seems to be working at an entirely different scale.
 

JB2448

Member
I hope for Microsoft's sake that they support this heavy investment in infrastructure with enough high quality interactive entertainment to justify the purchase of the most expensive dedicated gaming console this gen.
 

Omni

Member
So is this part of the Billion $ that MS announced would be allocated for Xbox One "games"?

Yes. The billion dollars put aside for games is actually the same billion dollars invested into cloud services. Devs just made said games exclusives out of the kindness of their hearts.
 

Omni

Member
Sounds like bullshit.


700 million to be stuck up the clouds of developers to keep games exclusive for 6 to 12 months.

I guess that cuts it, guys. Unregistered007 thinks this is bullshit. Who are Microsoft trying to kid, anyway? Christian Belady, the general manager of Microsoft's data centre services, obviously has no idea what he's talking about. There's no way they can get one around Unregistered007.
 

Raide

Member
I hope it pays of for them and us gamers. If they can lessen the possible Xbox Live outages during the busier launches, all should be good.
 
only about a million invested in XBL peer to peer connection servers the other $699 million is an NSA/Kinect recording studio so they can save all the videos of you doing terrorist activities!

I kid, but seriously that seems really steep, almost overkill levels, how can you spend that much on servers and cloud computing, I mean much smaller companies have done cloud computing for a lot cheaper than that.
 

Blearth

Banned
Jesus Christ, give it a rest.

Microsoft gave you all exactly what you wanted. You still wanna be bitter? Fine. But don't take good news and act like it means nothing.
 

Amir0x

Banned
So, what we know already of their investments

$400million NFL deal
$700 million in data center/cloud support
$1 billion in investments for development of first party/exclusives
A marketing campaign larger than the one for Kinect, so half a billion+
$??? in R&D costs for the Xbox One itself
__________________________________

$2.6 billion dollars + so far

Microsoft is paying out the ass this gen, I thought they wanted to be profitable this go around :p
 

snap0212

Member
I hope this means fast XBL downloads everywhere. I can't believe my XBL downloads are now less than half as fast as PSN downloads.
 

daniels

Member
Jesus Christ, give it a rest.

Microsoft gave you all exactly what you wanted. You still wanna be bitter? Fine. But don't take good news and act like it means nothing.

Just because they wiped the spit away doesn't mean they didn't spit in my face.
 

Auto_aim1

MeisaMcCaffrey
So, what we know already of their investments

$400million NFL deal
$700 million in data center/support
$1 billion in investments for development of first party/exclusives
A marketing campaign larger than the one for Kinect, so half a billion+
$??? in R&D costs for the Xbox One itself

Microsoft is paying out the ass this gen, I thought they wanted to be profitable this go around :p
Their AMD deal was valued to be around $3 billion. I think it's nice that they are giving so much priority to the Xbox brand. I don't think their entertainment division will be able to recover this investment soon but I guess they have multiple business models in effect.
 

slider

Member
So, what we know already of their investments

$400million NFL deal
$700 million in data center/cloud support
$1 billion in investments for development of first party/exclusives
A marketing campaign larger than the one for Kinect, so half a billion+
$??? in R&D costs for the Xbox One itself
__________________________________

$2.6 billion dollars + so far

Microsoft is paying out the ass this gen, I thought they wanted to be profitable this go around :p

Fuck me, that's a lot of cash. But I'm warmed by the thought these must be investments that stretch past this next generation. I know I'm assuming but they must be, right?
 

Blearth

Banned
Just because they wiped the spit away doesn't mean they didn't spit in my face.

A more appropriate analogy would be that MS said "Hey, I'm gonna spit in your face" and then you said "I'd rather you not do that" and then MS said "Ok, nevermind".
 

Amir0x

Banned
Jesus Christ, give it a rest.

Microsoft gave you all exactly what you wanted. You still wanna be bitter? Fine. But don't take good news and act like it means nothing.

Thank you for defending the honor of the soulless corporation who just spent 6 months actively constructing a system that fucked consumers in every orifice and still intends that to be their end goal in the future, even whilst they still do things like force Kinect on everyone for $100 greater, denies self-publishing for indies and continued to be deceptive about the terms of the Family Share Plan even after they dropped the service altogether and all the DRM nonsense. Thank you. Microsoft really appreciates it and they definitely needed it, given how vulnerable they always are. Shivering in the cold winter air like sad, dying puppies, patches of fur missing from malnutrition, all staring up at you like "help me, Blearth, everyone is being so mean, and didn't I just lick their face after I took a dump on their chest? Isn't that enough? What is a sad, defenseless puppy to do?"

Also, the Cloud Service is meaningless to me at the moment, including Sony's, so it's neutral news, not good or bad :p

Auto_aim1 said:
Their AMD deal was valued to be around $3 billion. I think it's nice that they are giving so much priority to the Xbox brand. I don't think their entertainment division will be able to recover this investment soon but I guess they have multiple business models in effect.

Goddamn.

So if you add that 3 billion to the mix, the investment to date that we know of is at least 5.6 billion, and we're still missing the largest chunk of R&D budget. That's insane. Do we have comparable numbers on what the average investment in a console upfront is?
 

2San

Member
Microsoft is paying out the ass this gen, I thought they wanted to be profitable this go around :p
Well they don't have to account for the RROD anymore I guess. Pretty sure if the whole RROD problem wasn't present they'd be profitable a lot earlier.
Also, the Cloud Service is meaningless to me at the moment, including Sony's, so it's neutral news, not good or bad :p
You don't care about dedicated servers?
 
A more appropriate analogy would be that MS said "Hey, I'm gonna spit in your face" and then you said "I'd rather you not do that" and then MS said "Ok, nevermind".

You forgot MS said. Even though Sony is not going to spit in your face we are going to spit in your face anyway. Then they saw pre-order numbers... Then they said we'll spit on your face later when your invested in a "policy change".
 

Amir0x

Banned
You don't care about dedicated servers?

Of course I do, but I simply need to see it actually happening the way it's advertised before I can get excited. Everything Microsoft has done with XBO sadly has had red small print or an asterisk, so I have to be careful to measure my expectations for anything Microsoft says for the XBO. Not my fault :/

Same with Sony's Gaikai. it'd be nice to stream old games, but I won't know how expansive or stable the system is for me until I use it, and I won't know how much they actually deliver on the promises, until I can see it for myself. The only difference is Sony has been more trustworthy so far this go around, so they have slightly less of a cynicism hill to climb with me right now lol
 

lynux3

Member
Fuck me, that's a lot of cash. But I'm warmed by the thought these must be investments that stretch past this next generation. I know I'm assuming but they must be, right?

Well, there are services beyond Xbox Live that need to be expanded. Xbox Live is just apart of the mix of services that are supported by "the Cloud".

You don't care about dedicated servers?

It's not a traditional dedicated server. The resources are shared between multiple devices and can be removed nearly instantly depending on demand.
 

Alx

Member
Just to put things in perspective, and assuming the number of gold subscribers is around 25 millions, $700 millions is about 7 months worth of live subscriptions (although we're currently talking about those servers in Iowa, that probably won't handle all needs worldwide).
Back in 2002 people complained that they had to pay a fee to play peer to peer multiplayer, 10 years later we're finally getting the servers financed by that money. It's not overkill, it's overdue.

The market is in decline, why increase the number of servers by that much?

They'll obviously have bigger needs, with more things running on those servers.
 
According to their declarations on May 21st, the current XBL was running on 5000 servers.
So what will all these servers mean? Is it for XBL? or Games? Do they need all the servers because of the sharing and streaming things you can do? I honestly dont know anything..sorry for asking so much questions.
 
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