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Jonathan Blow Criticizes MSs Claim of Increasing Servers to 300K, Calls It A Lie!
- Thread starter Miles Quaritch
- Start date
BoboBrazil
Member
There is an actual service that exists that streams games that Sony purchased, Gaikai. This technology actually exists. It is different to start streaming a game and be able to play it while it is downloading and improve graphics in a game from the cloud. They are unrelated.
GravityMan
Member
I agree with Blow that MS's server claim is suspect, and I understand that he's been unhappy with them for awhile due to their poor treatment of indies.
But Blow needs to chill and STFU...just concentrate on The Witness. Let other devs speak out (preferably in a more professional manner). Even if he never makes a game for Xbox One...it's just not smart to publicly berate a company and burn bridges. That could come back to bite him in the future.
But Blow needs to chill and STFU...just concentrate on The Witness. Let other devs speak out (preferably in a more professional manner). Even if he never makes a game for Xbox One...it's just not smart to publicly berate a company and burn bridges. That could come back to bite him in the future.
Well, they did say that their servers would have more power than all the world's computers in 1999. My main concern isn't the power of the servers but the uptime. Even the best networks go down from time to time, so what happens then? Would that prevent me from playing a new game I just bought should Xbox live be down and I need to authenticate the code for my game online? What happens if Xbox live experiences a security incident like PSN had and needs to go offline for a period of time? Will my console still be allowed to function even though it hasn't made a connection to Xbox Live in the 24 hr period?
Wolf Akela
Member
Well, hypothetically, MS can pull processing power out of the cloud. It all depends on how fast gigabit fiber infrastructure can be setup and how long it will take to penetrate the market. It'll never happen this soon, and we'll probably only see some use towards the end of the lifespan of nextgen consoles. That lifespan will probably even be a bit longer than this gen. We might see the Xbox One transition into an OnLive console by the time next gen ends.
According to this page, broadband took around 9-10 years to penetrate ~65% of the market, but it's safe to say not all of that is good enough for regular online gaming.
According to this page, broadband took around 9-10 years to penetrate ~65% of the market, but it's safe to say not all of that is good enough for regular online gaming.
MomoPufflet
Member
Well if he's full of crap or then so be it. Blow has the juice to actually get a response on something like this. Considering there have been several threads calling bullshit on aspects of "the cloud" already, I would think someone in his position publically asking their own questions would be a good thing.
MarauderShields
Member
It would mean more coming from someone else. He is a pretentious douche and people are probably sick of him.
Didn't Sony only say they were experimenting with it and that was their goal in the future? It could be done eventually, just not anytime soon and that's what Sony said.
All they talked about for actual usage of the cloud on PS4 was rendering and streaming PS4 game demos and to the Vita. Which is much more believable.
It doesn't "prove" anything. They've been as deliberately vague on this as they have been on everything else about their supposed long in development new console. If you think they will actually have 300,000 real servers sitting there on launch day then I don't know what to tell you. What would they use them for? If they did have 30,000 real servers for Xbox Live, as they say, what are they using ten times that for? They aren't going to suddenly have ten times the XBL userbase on day one, so even if some of them are used for some sort of cloud processing (which again is vague, which seems to be the MS way) there'll still be a load of these servers sitting there doing absolutely nothing. Either they'll be virtual on-demand servers or they'll be real servers numbering nowhere near 300,000 on day one.
You claim to be civil engineer. Do you program for computer games?
Because as flawed as the system is atm, the technology is proven. And Sony has officially said nothing (afaik) about providing BC via gaikai. They've been up front about the system not having BC.
I said this in the last thread. I can spin up many servers on my pc if I have the ram and processing power but what about performance when I'm hosting hundreds of thousands of hits hourly? Then we have worries about bandwidth. Microsoft does not have 300,000 physical severs for Xbone and I'm going to stick by that.
The only way I could see this working would be if Devs make two versions of their games each time. One which renders entirely on the cloud and streams in like Gaikai or Onlive, and a second which is the regular "offline" (because of course, with Xbox One it won't really be offline...) version which looks significantly worse.
Rendering partially on the console and partially on the cloud would create bottlenecks with the internet speed that would quite simply cause it to not work.
Rendering partially on the console and partially on the cloud would create bottlenecks with the internet speed that would quite simply cause it to not work.
Sounds like his prerogative. Personally I say let him at it. I'm glad to see developers bare their teeth a bit, because you never see people at big studios speaking their mind.
Tripolygon
Banned
Don't you just love when people use false equivalence.
Doug Heffernan
Member
Dude should stop talking out of his ass.
Palette Swap
Member
I'm a bit surprised some people would be quicker to make disparaging comments about an indie dev speaking his opinion than about the VG media who globally haven't questioned these cloud statements that much.
I'm not naive, Blow is obviously in a position where he's going to call bullshit on claims from a would be competitor but so few people calling this out is even more suspect. Either they're in the know and MS has some mind blowing stuff or they don't even care enough to investigate suspicious claims.
I'm not naive, Blow is obviously in a position where he's going to call bullshit on claims from a would be competitor but so few people calling this out is even more suspect. Either they're in the know and MS has some mind blowing stuff or they don't even care enough to investigate suspicious claims.
Manmademan
Member
Sony has said it's "Coming" but beyond that we don't know pricing, plans, that kind of thing.
They HAVE confirmed streaming of all PS4 titles to PSVita using Gaikai's tech, so the issue isn't a matter of "can the tech handle streaming games" because it clearly can, just an issue of how they're going to be able to monetize it.
The 30.000 servers are used to parse and data mine all the kinect data. That's why they're useful for devs and that's the business sense. I'm calling it.
300k dedicated physical servers would probably cost something like hundreds of millions of dollars per year at the least (take for example $1000 per server per year which seems very much on the low side of what it should cost, that would be $300 million).
bunbun777
Member
He is a grown man and entitled to his opinion. All the hurt feelings cannot take that away from him.
Does anyone here actually believe that the One will be 40x more powerful than the 360 based off the power of the cloud?
If MS cares so much about power they could have started with parity in the console and then blew Sony out of the water with the servers.
Does anyone here actually believe that the One will be 40x more powerful than the 360 based off the power of the cloud?
If MS cares so much about power they could have started with parity in the console and then blew Sony out of the water with the servers.
They said they're working on it, it would not be surprising if they eventually gave up on it or we at least didn't see it till the middle/end of the generation.
Being able to stream PS4 titles is completely different from streaming PS3 titles, and far simpler. PS4's architecture is close enough to PC architectures to make it straight forward and similar to what Gaikai and Onlive already did. The PS3 architecture however would require emulation and it can't be pulled off yet.
Well, it's one thing doubting and shit talking the claim that the cloud could improve X1 games by the factor 4 (note not x40, because with the cloud X1 could be 40 times better than the 360 - without "only" ten times better), but it's another thing claiming the numbers of servers for the cloud a lie without any prove.
RadixNegative2
Member
I can believe that MS is bullshitting about the servers and cloud stuff in one way or the other, considering their whole fake Kinect demo and stating "500 billion transistors."
300,000 could be some inflated theoretical number someone came up with as an estimate of how many servers MS might dedicate to Xbone 10 years from now. Or it could mean they had a bunch of poor sad interns gather 300,000 old desktop PC's and turn them into "servers" so that they could say they have 300,000 servers.
300,000 could be some inflated theoretical number someone came up with as an estimate of how many servers MS might dedicate to Xbone 10 years from now. Or it could mean they had a bunch of poor sad interns gather 300,000 old desktop PC's and turn them into "servers" so that they could say they have 300,000 servers.
Not even mildly interesting - there's nothing in that at all. Sony didn't make any outright lies.
Isn't the 300,000 figure related to their Azure cloud service? I'm pretty sure the Xbone cloud will be powered by Azure.
EDIT: Can't find any numbers for Azure, but Amazon EC2 has 500,000 servers. 300,000 doesn't seem to be far off, especially as professional users are paying a TON for their cloud services.
EDIT: Can't find any numbers for Azure, but Amazon EC2 has 500,000 servers. 300,000 doesn't seem to be far off, especially as professional users are paying a TON for their cloud services.
Phonomezer
Banned
I don't get the cloud business, not going to pretend I do and I'm not going to deride Blow or Microsoft. I will wait for E3, hopefully we'll get an explaination from Microsoft and other developers.
dollartaco
Member
This is like a master's course on irony.
This isn't really a point for contention. We don't know what was faked from the demo yet, but no matter what it NEEDED to be faked. A live demo of voice control tech would be completely and utterly idiotic.
Metalmurphy
Member
Oh shut up. If Valve/Sony made such claims I'd say the same thing. Using the cloud to compute physics, offload stuff from the GPU, etc is completely unrealistic. It's nothing but fantasy right now.
Can cloud computing be useful for gaming? Sure it can be, but in very very limited asynchronous ways, and that's if you disregard just how troublesome it is for developers to code a game that takes advantage of it yet still works when there's no online connection or there's connection problems.
You will not see "the cloud" being used in any meaningful manner.
Alx
Member
I was also wondering how Microsoft intended to compensate for the cost of all those servers, and how it will evolve with the increase of Xbox One sales...
But man, that Johnatan Blow guy seems stuck in hate mode against MS. I think he would be much more credible if he didn't have a daily rant.
But man, that Johnatan Blow guy seems stuck in hate mode against MS. I think he would be much more credible if he didn't have a daily rant.
Source?
BlastProcessing
Member
On the most recent Windows Weekly Podcast Mary Jo Foley said that the 300,000 servers where Xbox Live servers and not Azure. She said that they are completely different architectures, which surprised me.
jacksepticeye
Member
Hmmm...so this guy is making a PS4 exclusive, have developed a sour relationship with MS and is now claiming that the 300,000 servers from MS (who actually have one of the largest cloud network server in Azure) is a lie despite having no proof whatsoever, right? do I have the gist of it or is there more to this.
Metalmurphy
Member
Common sense and the minimal knowledge about networking/computing.
Ah well, what if they are those cheap and super efficient ARM servers I read somewhere about. Shouldn't be that hard to link up 300,000 of them if they are only some CortexA15's.
Phonomezer
Banned
LOL
uncledonnie
Banned
I must be missing something. Did anyone actually not think these servers were virtual?
Of course they are, it's friggin Azure. Doesn't mean the performance is bad at all.
Of course they are, it's friggin Azure. Doesn't mean the performance is bad at all.
Wishmaster92
Member
Lol we just think it sounds far fetched. Let's wait for e3, microsoft hasn't actually been straightforward about the cloud either.
oldergamer
Member
Seems there's a number of independents being increasingly vocal. This guy, the dude that worked on Fez, a few others. You can tell they are independents as they have never really worked with publishers before, and the first one is always going to feel like the worse one.
Arkam
Member
Why do you group them together like that? They all do not think a like or share the same goals. Some indies are trying to create games as art while others are working to start businesses.
So please stop saying things like "indies like this" or "indies hate that"
When in reality you are quoting few loud mouthed... and in this case paid/partisan indie saying their personal opinions.
lol
Let's see if trash talking the ex blows up in his face.
It's pretty obvious these snipes at MS are calculated and will put extra Sony love when his game comes out at launch (in ads I would assume), plus people are talking about him a lot.
MS will have a large userbase with XBone and if they decide to snub him over this, his gains will be very short term
theviolenthero
Member
Sony said that backwards compatibility will be available on the PS4 via the cloud.
http://www.destructoid.com/ps4-has-cloud-based-backwards-compatibility-246152.phtml
Also, you will be able to stream all of your PS4 games to your Vita for off-tv play via the cloud.
http://www.psvitahub.com/2013/05/official-ps4-site-confirms-ps-vita.html
Both companies have made bold claims about the cloud and we'll see if it hold's true.
Nice.
Considering that complanies in my line of business are using virtualized servers for high volume transactions and real-time market data, I'd say its all virtual.
The practical application for gaming is a question market since more intensive computation is required. Moderate level servers that are then virtualized leaves little to be desired.
The practical application for gaming is a question market since more intensive computation is required. Moderate level servers that are then virtualized leaves little to be desired.
RadixNegative2
Member
I'm not saying it didn't need to be faked. I completely understand the difficulties in showing something like that in a presentation. But their presentation made it seem as if it were live.
Now that they have faked the presentation while claiming it was live, I'm going to be suspicious of any other claims they make.
So I am suspicious of their claim of 300,000 servers.
As someone with common sense and minimal knowledge about networking/computing I can confirm this.
What specific (and go in as much detail as you'd like) do you want to be educated on?
Open Source
Banned
This is very likely the case.
And that's without even factoring in that that multiplatform releases would obviously avoid using it.