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[FordGTGuy]

You think Xbox has carte blanche to impose server load on Azure as it sees fit?

Seeing as Xbox could never even come close to using Azures capacity... yes.

Seeing as Xbox Live brings in a ton of money in subscriptions fees... yes.

Seeing as a Azure server is flexible enough to spin up a VM to run Forza and then go directly to Office 365 client streaming after... yes.

 

[Bloodrage]

So, if I am streaming it to my Windows 10 PC;which is also pulling internets. Do I get 2x clouds?

How's your internet connection? That's the real question.

 

[AgentP]

Why CAN'T Sony do this? Cost is not a valid answer since they can afford it.

Sony has nothing to gain for putting on a tech demo for PR, they are not the ones with the weaker console. MS is just leveraging what they can to change the 'underpowered' message. It's not like MS is going to have dozens of different titles wasting Azure time, they just need one example to wave around, red meat for the fans.

 

[not_so_special]

people sell your expensive pcs and titans the cloud is here

Sony has nothing to gain for putting on a tech demo for PR, they are not the ones with the weaker console. MS is just leveraging what they can to change the 'underpowered' message. It's not like MS is going to have dozens of different titles wasting Azure time, they just need one example to wave around, red meat for the fans.

bingo,and its working with some passionate users

 

[hawk2025]

Seeing as Xbox could never even come close to using Azures capacity... yes.

Seeing as Xbox Live brings in a ton of money in subscriptions fees... yes.

Anything can come close to reaching a server farm's capacity if it's inefficient enough.

I can send multiple jobs everywhere. I can have jobs multiply, I can write horribly inefficient code. I've had code use 16 instances on AWS and afterwards reduce it to just 4, running faster on each instance.

No, Xbox does not have carte blanche to use as much load as they want on Azure. A "ton" of money in subscription fees is a completely empty statement -- If somehow Crackdown 3 was taking up 100 servers for each player due to terrible code, it would not be acceptable.

I mean, this is basic common sense.

 

[LyleLanley]

Seeing as Xbox could never even come close to using Azures capacity... yes.

Seeing as Xbox Live brings in a ton of money in subscriptions fees... yes.

I'm genuinely curious as to how much of Azures capacity this could potentially take up. As in theoretically if every single Xbox Live member played Crackdown 3 at the same time could the servers handle it? If so would other services be effected? Would it make any fiscal sense?

 

[The Lone Courier]

I'm genuinely impressed.

 

[Nafai1123]

So on one level you're right of course: MS aren't the only cloud provider in town.

However they're one of the big ones, and the only one who also has a gaming arm - unless you count Gaikai but that's not really apples to apples at this point.

On a technical point it's a lot more than just "spinning up a VM", there's a whole boat load of underlying infrastructure and SaaS (scaling processes) is very different to IaaS (scaling up and down VMs) and that's where some of the smarts are: how do you make that fast without overhead, how do you route traffic to the most geographically appropriate place, how do you auto-scale so and auto load-balance, how do you support the back-end data needs, how do you handle the vast quantities of data being thrown around - where do you store it to do your analytics, how do you slice and dice it, and on and on and on and on.

TL;DR: Cloud is more than just VMs.

So, yeah, it comes down a lot to software too - and MS already has a huge investment in this area, the cloud platform is incredibly mature.

So nothing stops MS being the only company to do this... but there aren't many that can do it at scale and there aren't any others that are doing it (again, except Gaikai which has some similarities but is a lot more 'IaaS').

I completely agree with you. MS is way ahead of anyone at this point, especially in regards to software development.

All I'm saying is that being the first and owning the infrastructure does not mean it's impossible for others to follow suite. AFAIK Cloudgine has not been acquired by MS. Maybe they will become a big player in 3rd party licensing in the future? Maybe Epic will build these features into Unreal Engine and will make it much easier for developers to take advantage of? Who knows what the future holds.

 

[Hockeymac18]

Why CAN'T Sony do this? Cost is not a valid answer since they can afford it.

Sony could certainly do this, there's nothing stopping them in theory other than effort and money.

However, there's more to this problem than just acquiring enough servers. This isn't as easy as just throwing up some servers and calling it a day (even if we are to assume that it makes economic sense to acquire those servers, which I don't know if it would or not since I don't have that kind of information, obviously).

That thinking really trivializes the immense software accomplishment that Dave Jone's team has demonstrated. There's years of research that has gone into overcoming the (many I assume) technical hurdles involved in this to make it run smoothly. To think that this could be done by Sony (or any other publisher) in an easy manner is probably a little unrealistic. I'm certain Sony (and other companies) have plenty of programmers capable enough of tackling this problem and getting it to work - but the question is if they have resources and direction from their companies to actually make it work.

It's hard to know the answer to that question, but considering the unproven nature of this tech, I assume that they're not looking into it just yet (at least not at the level that MS is). The only reason MS is where they are is because of the giant push by the entire company to embrace the cloud (and as such this seemed to be a central tenet in the design of the XB1 from the beginning).

I assume this will be similar to Xbox Live and online gaming - MS may lead for a bit in this space (even if it's a minor thing in gaming). And if it catches on and consumers show a big interest in it, you can guarantee other companies (like Sony) will find solutions to make it work, too (whether that's developing an in-house solution or licensing tech from Cloudgine).

But it won't happen overnight. I'd even be surprised if Sony had something similar by the end of the generation (but could definitely see it for PS5).

 

[revbatboy]

How's your internet connection? That's the real question.

I need internet? Welp I'm out.

 

[PhatSaqs]

IGN's video just went up. Good stuff. http://www.ign.com/videos/2015/08/06/17-minutes-of-explosive-crackdown-3-gameplay-gamescom-2015

Very very impressive.

 

[shandy706]

It's the same technical demonstration as the other video. Just better quality.

Why are the rounds he fired and the way the character moved and the way he destroyed things completely different in this one then?

 

[revbatboy]

How's your internet connection? That's the real question.

56k

 

[FordGTGuy]

I'm genuinely curious as to how much of Azures capacity this could potentially take up. As in theoretically if every single Xbox Live member played Crackdown 3 at the same time could the servers handle it? If so would other services be effected? Would it make any fiscal sense?

A single server blade has 10 dual core Xenon E5-2400 processors, a rack has 24 of these blades.

 

[RyudBoy]

I think it looks great in the higher res IGN video I just posted, but yeah, if you don't like the art style, you don't like the art style. I think it lends itself well to this technology.

Yeah I never liked the way Crackdown looks, but I just watched that video and all of the buildings getting blown up looks really impressive. Would love to see this tech in another game.

 

[Chris1]

Seeing as Xbox could never even come close to using Azures capacity... yes.

Seeing as Xbox Live brings in a ton of money in subscriptions fees... yes.

Seeing as a Azure server is flexible enough to spin up a VM to run Forza and then go directly to Office 365 client streaming after... yes.

Another thing to note is that third parties have to pay to use the cloud on xbox one, they just get a very good discount to use it, so it's really just increasing Azure's customer base, not necessarily giving xbox live thousands of free servers to use, that would only really be the case for first party games.

If cloud use in gaming like this takes off, it's going to make Azure even bigger, it's not just xbox or gaming even though that's what they are using it for.

 

[FordGTGuy]

Anything can come close to reaching a server farm's capacity if it's inefficient enough.

I can send multiple jobs everywhere. I can have jobs multiply, I can write horribly inefficient code. I've had code use 16 instances on AWS and afterwards reduce it to just 4, running faster on each instance.

No, Xbox does not have carte blanche to use as much load as they want on Azure. A "ton" of money in subscription fees is a completely empty statement -- If somehow Crackdown 3 was taking up 100 servers for each player due to terrible code, it would not be acceptable.

I mean, this is basic common sense.

I will surely await the first GAF thread on a Xbox Live user facing a "Xbox Live has run out of Azure server usage, please wait in a queue".

 

[gamechanger87]

Why are the rounds he fired and the way the character moved and the way he destroyed things completely different in this one then?

DaveJ ran a live demo for him that was pretty much the same as the fanfest one. He then handed over the controller and started making live changes to the weapons for the IGN guy.

 

[Bam Bam Baklava]

Why are the rounds he fired and the way the character moved and the way he destroyed things completely different in this one then?

I'm saying it's the same small demo area with the same buildings. We don't know what is enabled in the engine other than the stuff being shown off.

 

[leeh]

Sony has nothing to gain for putting on a tech demo for PR, they are not the ones with the weaker console. MS is just leveraging what they can to change the 'underpowered' message. It's not like MS is going to have dozens of different titles wasting Azure time, they just need one example to wave around, red meat for the fans.

Is this a joke post?

 

[hawk2025]

I will surely await the first GAF thread on a Xbox Live user facing a "Xbox Live has run out of Azure server usage, please wait in a queue".

That's a completely disingenuous post, and you know it. That's not what we were talking about.

I'm saying it's the same small demo area with the same buildings. We don't know what is enabled in the engine other than the stuff being shown off.

The point is that it shows that what we had previously seen was not just a pre-cooked demo somehow.

 

[Pathfinder]

Is this a joke post?

Sadly, no. There are always going to be people who believe the only reason Microsoft is doing this is because their console is weaker.

Not much will change their minds about that.

 

[Dynasty]

Is this a joke post?

Nope unfortunately, AgentP stands for Agen Pony.

 

[blazinglazers]

Sony has nothing to gain for putting on a tech demo for PR, they are not the ones with the weaker console. MS is just leveraging what they can to change the 'underpowered' message. It's not like MS is going to have dozens of different titles wasting Azure time, they just need one example to wave around, red meat for the fans.

LOL, this is such pathetically sad & salty fanboy drivel.

MS isn't funding this for PR, they're not spending millions to combating message board memes. They're developing a game and delivering on a vision of their tech.

The demo here is an amazing proof of concept, and shows the feasibility of a tech that could benefit all games across all systems in the future. How can you not get excited seeing that scale of interactive destructibility? Stuff like that was only possible through offline simulations before, now it's happening in realtime!

 

[shandy706]

DaveJ ran a live demo for him that was pretty much the same as the fanfest one. He then handed over the controller and started making live changes to the weapons for the IGN guy.

I know that

I'm saying it's the same small demo area with the same buildings. We don't know what is enabled in the engine other than the stuff being shown off.

Ah, I thought you were saying it was the same exact video. It's Pre-Alpha, so I don't expect some fully realized world or multiple multiplayer maps yet.

I wish I could go hands on

I wanna blow crap up.

 

[FordGTGuy]

That's a completely disingenuous post, and you know it. That's not what we were talking about.



The point is that it shows that what we had previously seen was not just a pre-cooked demo somehow.

This is what they are offering, this is what we are talking about.

Don't come in here talking about how Xbox has to have limited use of Azure without any evidence.

 

[NoMoreTrolls]

What's horse shit?

Last of Us is played on hardware in the cloud, the video from this hardware is streamed to your console; your controller input is also streamed to the cloud in order to control the game.



Yeah... no.

I know how Playstation Now works, thanks. You said that people were claiming that it was the same thing as this, and that it was just as impressive. Your words. Which were complete bullshit.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

Very nice tech.

I agree. I am fascinated by the idea of it. Crackdown is only going to use it for physics, but can future games use the technology for things like A.I or in-loading of assets that take the heat off the processor?


Basically the idea, like some games have used in the past that on the players side, on the players console everything that is being "rendered" in realtime is just the surface textures, the skins and models, but what is really going on underneath, is done on the games servers.


Think of it this way-


The reason why GTA is the way it is, is that GTA only "renders" the city around your person. If you shoot 10 cars and you go far away and come back, any evident of the 10 cars you shot is gone. The game only loads the game around you, and so a degree in-game permanence is not there. In the future, if we could make it so that the entire gameworld becomes rendered at once (not just a small part around the player) and then, take off resources from the CPU and move them to the a foreign server that does a lot of the computational work.

Then in theory, what should be left is rendering what is on screen (via the GPU) and a stable fast connection to transfer what sort of extremely efficent texture pop-in to load in, where the player can see.

 

[Raonak]

Jesus.... they're still playing the shitty PR game. MS gonna MS.

But quite interesting to see the tech seemingly working, i do wonder how well it'll actually work in consumer's hands, but the fallback option is quite good.

This is probably gonna be an MS exclusive option for a while, sony's already got the tech with PSNow (which is handing way more data), the limitiation there is that it's only avaliable in specific places. So they're gonna have to wait to expand it out, or use someone elses servers.

The real question is whether it's actually worth it.

 

[Kinyou]

Sony has nothing to gain for putting on a tech demo for PR, they are not the ones with the weaker console. MS is just leveraging what they can to change the 'underpowered' message. It's not like MS is going to have dozens of different titles wasting Azure time, they just need one example to wave around, red meat for the fans.

MS has been talking about the cloud long before we even knew how the consoles would compare. This isn't some emergency plan

 

[NoMoreTrolls]

This is what they are offering, this is what we are talking about.

Don't come in here talking about how Xbox has to have limited use of Azure without any evidence.

...So in absence of evidence to the contrary, you prove to believe that MS just gives away server space with no limitations? That makes a ton of sense. It's smart to make others prove the negative rather than offering any evidence to the positive. Good call.

Spoiler

SCREAMS INTERALLY

 

[tmtyf]

Why CAN'T Sony do this? Cost is not a valid answer since they can afford it.

Wasn't Sony in a financial situation? They are bringing in money from PS but were losing from other avenues last year i think so i don't think they have the cash to just be throwing around like MS does.

 

[hawk2025]

This is what they are offering, this is what we are talking about.

Don't come in here talking about how Xbox has to have limited use of Azure without any evidence.

Evidence is simple common sense.

If a dev team, internal or external, pitches a game with code inefficient enough that it costs $100 per $60 copy sold, it won't go through, period.

How can you even argue otherwise?

 

[soul creator]

Haha, I love that Dave Jones nodding is what created this giant thread.

The cloud makes your console 20x more powerful, and his nod makes your threads 20x larger

 

[SEGAvangelist]

Haha, I love that Dave Jones nodding is what created this giant thread.

Dude is a PR genius!!! Dem nods are brutal.

 

[Jigorath]

Haha, I love that Dave Jones nodding is what created this giant thread.

The cloud makes your console 20x more powerful, and his nod makes your threads 20x larger

The power of the nod.

 

[RiccochetJ]

I agree. I am fascinated by the idea of it. Crackdown is only going to use it for physics, but can future games use the technology for things like A.I or in-loading of assets that take the heat off the processor?

If I'm not mistaken weren't the Titanfall grunts AI and the Titan AI when you weren't in it handled server side?

 

[AgentP]

MS has been talking about the cloud long before we even knew how the consoles would compare. This isn't some emergency plan

I guess you missed the part about leveraging their stuff for the XB1? You didn't disagree with anything I said and I never mentioned an emergency.

 

[LyleLanley]

Evidence is simple common sense.

If a dev team, internal or external, pitches a game with code inefficient enough that it costs $100 per $60 copy sold, it won't go through, period.

How can you even argue otherwise?

This seems to be part of a different argument. Obviously Microsoft isn't going to let horribly inefficient software that can clog up the whole system run on their server. That doesn't necessarily mean that developers will be limited in their resources.

 

[OEM]

lol those Sony can also do posts. lmao

In that sense even Apple can make cars, disregard every other car manufactures who have spent several decades of research and learning.


This is not something you wake up amd decide to do next day, Azure is going to be 20 fucking billion $ business in 3 years. Thats almost the size of entire Sony corporation market cap. Which is irrelevant comparison I know but just putting everything into perspective.

Microsoft have been working on their server technology for years, they have data center across the globe. Robust developer tools to build stuff.

 

[Dynasty]

Haha, I love that Dave Jones nodding is what created this giant thread.

The cloud makes your console 20x more powerful, and his nod makes your threads 20x larger

His nods are 20x more powerful than a normal nod since it is powered by the almighty, mystical, beautiful deity Azure.

 

[FordGTGuy]

I know how Playstation Now works, thanks. You said that people were claiming that it was the same thing as this, and that it was just as impressive. Your words. Which were complete bullshit.

You need to actually read back into conversations before jumping into them.

Evidence is simple common sense.

If a dev team, internal or external, pitches a game with code inefficient enough that it costs $100 per $60 copy sold, it won't go through, period.

How can you even argue otherwise?

Crackdown 3 is being made, your wrong and common sense failed you.

Azure is on its way to becoming Microsoft's biggest money maker and is currently beating all estimations.

...So in absence of evidence to the contrary, you prove to believe that MS just gives away server space with no limitations? That makes a ton of sense. It's smart to make others prove the negative rather than offering any evidence to the positive. Good call.

Spoiler

SCREAMS INTERALLY

Maybe when you've been around a little longer you'll understand that the burden of proof is on the person making a claim.

I'm not claiming anything beyond what Microsoft is offering and has offered with Xbox Live.

 

[Trup1aya]

Not much else I can do at the moment, writing up my impressions though. It was one of the few titles that I've seen this year that actually seemed like it lived up to what they were aiming for, technically anyway. I do share concerns about cloud computing when it comes to player-bases though. At one point the screen noted about 10 cloud servers were being used, and even though it looked impressive, the fact is still that it's all lost if MS decides to turn off the servers, pretty much crossing off one of the biggest potential selling points of the game.

I'd love to see a demo across an international network though, especially with varying connection speeds, since for demo purposes they understandably opted for an optimal network for PR purposes.

MS isn't going to just turn off the servers... Azure is primarily as service for enterprise customers and brings in $600mil annually... It's not going anywhere

They might remove Crackdown 3s access to those servers... At which point, it suffers the same fate as any other Multiplayer game....

Still I think crackdown 3's online mode will live longer than the typical MP game, because it's footprint on the server load is only as big as its current demand... If the game loses popularity, there's no harm in letting people continue to play online, because the amount servers dedicated to it will fluctuate in line with the number of people playing it... There's no waste...

 

[Emedan]

It's very promising for the future sure, but what's this nonsense that Sony couldn't do it too? Of course they can, and not only that, they can probably even buy the service from Microsoft.

 

[Kinyou]

I guess you missed the part about leveraging their stuff for the XB1? You didn't disagree with anything I said and I never mentioned an emergency.

But you're saying they're actively working to change the "underpowered message" while cloud computing has actually always been part of their plan. This isn't a reaction by them to that messsage.

 

[Frog-fu]

His nods are 20x more powerful than a normal nod since it is powered by the almighty, mystical, beautiful deity Azure.

.

 

[Missile Defense]

Very very impressive.

The quality of the IGN video really helps to show just how impressive this really is! It really helps it when they give the controller over to the gamer to show that it's really real. Amazing!

So we have gone from using the cloud to stream the entire game to using the cloud to offload physics from the local game session to create a hybrid solution. Amazing how things progress in such a small amount of time.

As for Sony, they technically don't need to follow suite since they can design games for their cloud system that fully exploits the abilities of the server hardware and then just stream the entire game to PS4 players.

It seems to me that Microsoft simply believes that there are too many issues with full streaming and so this hybrid approach might work better for them since the bandwidth requirements are more manageable for more people. Interesting to see the two giants take completely different approaches.

 

[Jigorath]

It's very promising for the future sure, but what's this nonsense that Sony couldn't do it too? Of course they can, and not only that, they can probably even buy the service from Microsoft.

Sony doesn't have the nods for something like this.

 

[hawk2025]

This seems to be part of a different argument. Obviously Microsoft isn't going to let horribly inefficient software that can clog up the whole system run on their server. That doesn't necessarily mean that developers will be limited in their resources.

It's the same thought process.

If my simulation of, say, Crackdown 4 is amazingly efficient but so incredibly rich and complex that server usage becomes prohibitive, it won't happen.

Revenues needing to be greater than costs is not a novel concept, I'm amazed that there's any contention at all with this point.

You need to actually read back into conversations before jumping into them.



Crackdown 3 is being made, your wrong and common sense failed you.

Azure is on its way to becoming Microsoft's biggest money maker and is currently beating all estimations.



Maybe when you've been around a little longer you'll understand that the burden of proof is on the person making a claim.

I'm not claiming anything beyond what Microsoft is offering and has offered with Xbox Live.

I can't wait to read your evidence on how Crackdown is inefficient.

BTW it's capable of 20x the power of a Xbox One in a session.

A Crackdown 3 session is up to 99 players and it's is not constantly using 20x at all times.

You clearly have no interest in an intellectually honest discussion. I'm done.
I never said Crackdown 3 is inefficient, and you know it. This is not the point I'm making, and you know it.

 

[Pathfinder]

lol those Sony can also do posts. lmao

In that sense even Apple can make cars, disregard every other car manufactures who have spent several decades of research and learning.


This is not something you wake up amd decide to do next day, Azure is going to be 20 fucking billion $ business in 3 years. Thats almost the size of entire Sony corporation market cap. Which is irrelevant comparison I know but just putting everything into perspective.

Microsoft have been working on their server technology for years, they have data center across the globe. Robust developer tools to build stuff.

Nothing says Sony can't be Azure customers, if they want to.