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[Subitai]

Yay, more iCloud!

Spoiler

Apple has half of iCloud on Azure and half on Amazon

Um, no telling how much this will help XBL. If for some reason they offer a killer deal and lots of people jump on XBL, then now they'll be able to handle it. Would be nice if they still were looking into MMOs, but past failures from other devs will keep MSG an MMO graveyard.

 

[Silly.Mikey]

i'm not arguing that. they will, good.

but there are more than a few that think this datacentre is ALL about live. it is not, and never will be. it's about their whole suite of Azure products.

Office 365, App hosting, etc are bigger fish to fry than XBL.

Honestly, who knows at this point. Im guessing that they want people to be able to not only use Cloud for dedicated servers but also be able to download games digitally like Halo5 and Ghosts on the day of release without Xbox live crawling down to snail speed. I have to assume that those will take a lot of juice in themselves.

 

[TheLegendary]

What annoys me most about this thread is that for the next months or years, Xbox Fanboys are going to continuously tell me that Xbox has 300,000 dedicated cloud servers, and MS spent 700 million on the Xbox infrastructure.

When in reality this is about their Cloud service, independant of Xbox.

Furthermore, we have not gotten any details of the Cost of the cloud to developers, so for all intents and purposes, this Cloud is no different from Other clouds available to any developer.

Who cares if they're leveraging their business services for the Xbox; thats what they should be doing. This level of investment would never be greenlit for gaming exclusively. If the Xbox division can coattail on the Azure platform and benefit with some awesome new features and services in the end who cares? Hell, Sony did the same thing with Blu Ray last gen when we all (should) know the real reasons for shoehorning it in.
Are the numbers completely accurate? Of course not. It's a marketing/PR release. Will the end result of the investment be worthwhile to us as gamers? We have no way of confirming that yet obviously, but it should inspire confidence that MS is investing in gaming in a big way. Not sure how people can spin this in a negative way...

 

[Xenon]

I learned it from Adam Orth.

So it looks like you trust them enough to let them lead you by example

 

[J.W.Crazy]

I assume that Microsoft will still allow developers to use their own servers though and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see EA and Ubi, specifically, who are so in love with Origin/uPlay, do just that.


And when EA shuts down servers this gen we will need to grab our pitchforks and descend upon them. Because if the use of Microsoft's servers are truly free and EA decides to skip that so they can remain in control of their games... well, that will be a whole new level of gross, even for EA.

Even if Microsoft offers free dedicated servers and EA uses them there's nothing stopping them from shutting games down. They'd still be EA's to do with as they please.

 

[Louis Cyphre]

Even if Microsoft offers free dedicated servers and EA uses them there's nothing stopping them from shutting games down. They'd still be EA's to do with as they please.

True. It's one of the policies EA fought for before they decided to support Xbox Live back in 2002. I always found their sports games to run worse than other Live games.

 

[DyTonic]

It's going to be a rainy day in hell..

 

[Xplatformer]

A more appropriate analogy would be that MS said "Hey, I'm gonna spit in your face because it'll be better for us in the long run" and then you said "I'd rather you not do that" and then MS said "Ok, nevermind".

So this.

 

[Sub_Level]

Make sure you put a password on it.

But thats the thing. Everyone expects a password so i will trick people by not having one.

 

[Playsation_]

I smell XBLG cost doubled.

 

[Jake Tower]

I smell XBLG cost doubled.

We haven't heard anything on that front, but I stand by my prediction of XBLG increasing to 100+ USD. I feel even more confident in that prediction each account on a console no longer has to purchase Gold for itself.

 

[JudgeB]

We haven't heard anything on that front, but I stand by my prediction of XBLG increasing to 100+ USD. I feel even more confident in that prediction each account on a console no longer has to purchase Gold for itself.

Considering your Gold is applicable through both Xbox 360 and Xbox One this is kind of foolish to think. They would have to make Gold cost $100 period, even for people only owning and gaming on the 360. Ya, that isn't happening.

 

[Miles X]

Considering your Gold is applicable through both Xbox 360 and Xbox One this is kind of foolish to think. They would have to make Gold cost $100 period, even for people only owning and gaming on the 360. Ya, that isn't happening.

They've already confirmed gold will remain the same price.

 

[Delusibeta]

So with that, I say goodnight sweet prince. You are no longer the Gaf I used to know and love.

>registered February 2013.

I think this is the fastest I've seen someone go from "yay, this community is great" to "boo, this community is shit".

This! SO much this! I joined this forum some months ago because of the reputation this place got for great, relatively unbiased gaming conversation and inside information, but in the past month or so its been embarrassing to read all the blind negativity towards Microsoft. ANY amount of positive news regarding the Xbox or Microsoft as a whole turns into a negative troll fest. It's getting unbearable to read any topic past the initial post relaying the positive information.

> registered February 2013.

Or alternatively these could be Microsoft fanboys who think they didn't burn all of their goodwill in the eyes of most hardcore gamers. Certainly, they weren't around when Sony burnt their goodwill from the PS1 and PS2 on a large bonfire at E3 2006 and saw Sony receive similar amounts of shit for years afterward. I wonder if these guys ever saw a Vita thread?

Wired re reporting dedicated servers for all games, we hope that's the case but suspect MS would have announced it if that was the case.

From what I've heard, Wired is talking out of their arse on that count: specifically, I've heard murmurs that CoD Ghosts will be peer-to-peer on all formats.

 

[JudgeB]

They've already confirmed gold will remain the same price.

Exactly my point.

 

[Jake Tower]

They've already confirmed gold will remain the same price.

For Xbox 180?

 

[Raide]

For Xbox 180?

Well, you 360 Live carries over, so nothing is stopping you from buying old 360 Live cards right?

 

[Amir0x]

I've posted it too many times now, but Sony, Nintendo are all soul less corporations. Stop pretending that they give a flying fuck about you and buy whichever suits you.

I think the gist of people's frustrations is we are back at a point where any MS topic is derailed almost instantly with "bullshit!" posts which contribute nothing at all to the topic at hand.

Eventually this particular topic would be known one way or the other on their finance sheets.

I'd still like to know the definition of all this, one statement of dedicated servers for all XB1 MP games and I am back on board

edit: er 1 statment from MS about dedicated servers...without Sony following suite

It just so happens that Microsoft tried to fuck gamers harder than any other company in the industry before, and that means something. It does mean by definition Microsoft is currently worse than Sony and Nintendo, who have yet to try such things. I know it sucks to hear that, but getting hyperdefensive and trying to make a point that has no relevancy toward me is not going to change that.

But that does not mean I don't think Sony and Nintendo are soulless corporations out for their own bottom line, nor did my comment imply anything like that. The fact that you went Armadillo on me at the mere sight of someone calling MS soulless says a lot.

Because this is me from last night, on just such a similar subject:

I think the point he is making is that neither of them really "love" or "hate" gamers, they are both doing what they think is in their best interest to maximize profits at the moment, and if the opportunity arose where they thought they could get away with something negative to consumers while enhancing their margins, they would do it.

These companies are not some glorious defenders of the consumer at heart, despite the showy display at E3 by Sony (even though I indulged in some of the hyperbole "Sony saved gaming" stuff, as a celebratory measure). Sony simply understood the temperature of the industry at the moment, saw an opportunity to steal customers away by being adamant about their support for things they want, and capitalized on Microsoft's mistakes. It's not some charitable gesture or something

So yes, as a gamer I'd choose Sony more right now because they've been making decisions that just so happen to be better for me as a consumer, but neither of the companies are some shining white knight on a hill looking out for our best interest.

Link

Does it sound like I'm some fanboy championing an unrealistic ideal about some company? Of course not. Only fanboys see demons where they are none.

 

[kurbaan]

Did Sony titles have dedicated servers last gen because they wanted to provide better service, or because their developers didn't have P2P game development experience. The dedicated server model is actually the more traditional model.

Regardless, this is the past:

May we never, ever again see server rooms full of game consoles serving up specific titles. It's inefficient, it's hard to scale, and it's guaranteed to be retired and relatively quickly. Virtual servers are the way to go, period, and Sony needs to do the same thing.

I think it would be foolish if Sony or developers in general for that matter are not moving to "cloud" i.e virtual servers. What people need to understand is though Sony doesnt need to build out data centers to do this stuff they can just as easily get the servers from Amazon or Microsoft or anyone else in that space. The only reason Microsoft is creating datacenters is to expand their Azure service not XBL. XBL will just share the same azure servers with any other service that is on Azure.

However for a service like Gaikai I think sony will need to create some sort of datacenters since I do not think it is possible to run it on virtual servers.

 

[Pound_lb003]

All this 'big data' crud is so way ahead of it's time.

The reality is it's not widely applicable on a consumer scale. It's only just become applicable for business. So this is so far ahead it's probably not even something we'll be thinking about come the end of this console generation on a consumer level.

 

[Dramos]

I don't if anyone saw this but it appears that Oracle teamed up with Microsoft to bring its database software to the Windows cloud.

Hopefully this will bring more flexibility and efficient in some cases.

 

[Alx]

However for a service like Gaikai I think sony will need to create some sort of datacenters since I do not think it is possible to run it on virtual servers.

That's how I understand it too. And also something that makes me skeptical about backwards compatibility through Gaikai : if they need the original components to run the games, they will face a problem of availability (plus the mentioned scaling and maintenance difficulties)

 

[Hawk269]

Well, you 360 Live carries over, so nothing is stopping you from buying old 360 Live cards right?

lmao. Good one. It is hilarious to hear people jumping to conclusions on this and yet be oblivious to common sense like buying up a few current gold membership cards and using them.

 

[DenogginizerOS]

All this investment in Xbox makes me wonder how long the reversal on DRM will last because I get the feeling many of these investments had bigger revenue streams in place than the ones currently in place.