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[bishoptl]

Isn't really though, is there?

There's a handful of people talking about how cool something might be, getting shot to shit by a crowd of people who absolutely refuse to believe that anything from the company that makes Windows might actually be good.

As usual.

*hums the melody to "The Old Rugged Cross"*

 

[LukasTaves]

"The game or servers are good, works and better" - Right. The function of a game console is to play video games. The game is improved by the cloud functionality ("good, works and better"). The console is therefore better at its primary function.

In tech marketing, you don't pass up the opportunity to refer to that as "more powerful."

Sony would do the same. Nintendo would do the same.

The reason that people are hating on this is not the PR spin. Everyone who has as much as half a brain knows why it's being hated on HERE, but they aren't going to say it at the risk of being taken down by a mob.

Precisely. This whole "it's not that it won't work or make the games better, we just have a problem with them marketing as if this makes xbone more powerful" narrative is annoying and only detracts from the discussion. Regardless of the market spin, Ms should get props for investing yet again in what could drive gaming further along using their servers. Driving everyone to invest on cloud processing and research that can make the shortcomings of cloud processing go away will benefit all gamers from all platforms in the future, not unlike investing millions in a unified server structure paid of into a few years ago.

 

[Neuromancer]

The destruction in that Crackdown video is pretty cool stuff, I will readily admit that. But is it worth the price of always having to be online to be able to do it? Not for me. I would honestly rather have a game with Red Faction Guerrilla-style destruction that I can run on my own system.

 

[ElTorro]

Your aruments were speculation at the best as shown. And when people challenged you or proved you wrong uou bowed out and moved on to another thread.

Your final conclusion is that it will be an insular application. Your supporting reasons ranged from cost to just flat out why or if there was even a need really to have that in a game?

I dug out some posts that I made two years ago, elaborating on parts of what I argued, in case it makes it my "speculation" clearer to you.

There is no reason to make a "hybrid" application for performance reasons, that is, a game that runs partially on local hardware and partially on remote infrastructure. You would have a distributed software system which is inherently more difficult to engineer and test. And you would combine expensive local hardware with expensive remote infrastructure. It doesn't make sense.

The only reasonable design for a cloud-based gaming infrastructure that scales its performance over time is to run games entirely in the cloud and stream their input/output to a generic thin client. This way, the game itself is not architecturally distributed and, hence, much easier to develop. Nevertheless, you would still benefit from the cloud's benefits like resource-efficiency and the outsourcing of upgrades and maintenance from customers to service providers.

There are, of course, features that you need a server infrastructure for, but these things are inherently in need of networking, for instance, synchronization of players in multiplayer games, social stuff, aggregation and analysis of data, etc. But nobody is "offloading" stuff that would otherwise run locally for performance reasons. Performance may benefit as a side-effect (e.g., a console does not have to run the server in multiplayer games) but the functionality itself would be inherently network-based.

This is true not just for technological reasons, but also for economic reasons: why would anyone pay for a cloud infrastructure to implement features that no player would care enough for to justify its price? Nobody would pay a monthly fee to run cloud-based servers that calculate pre-baked lighting. This is ridiculous. The developer would scale such features down such that they run on the local hardware. Its easier, and its free.

And finally, I haven't heard of any convincing idea for performance-motivated offloading of subsystems to a server. I have just seen some developers merely philosophizing about what might be technically possible without taking into account the necessary development costs or the actual impact of this idea. Everything else has been done long ago in online games.

The problem is that most people have a naive concept of computation and computing power. Computing power is not a homogeneus quantity that can solve all problems equally. This is also evident in SIMD processors like GPUs. If you can't formulate your algorithm in such a way that the same routine can be executed independently on independent pieces of sufficently large data sets, you simply can't use the theoretical computing power of that processor. And wirting such algorithms is not limited by "skill". Many computational problems are not parallalizable in nature, or do not scale linearly with computing power.

In distributed systems, in addition, you not only have to deal with concurrent programming, but also with asychonicity, communication, failures, latency, bandwidth, etc. These problems are everything but trivial. Most important, you can hardly find a generalizable method/tool that deals with these issues for every computational problem in the same way.

Gaikai does not "really" have these problems because the software it executes is just a normal game that runs on normal PC hardware. The only difference is, that this hardware is no located in a data center, while your "monitor and mouse" are in your home. The problems, in essence, reduce to video streaming. (In practice, things are more complicated, but the analogy is valid in principle).

When it comes to "offloading computation" you start talking about a distributed system. And here things get very complicated. No developer would get into this mess if it is not absolutly necessary, e.g. for online multiplayer.

Anyone is free to argue against that. I hope that people who try understand the difference between "being right" and "writing the last post".

 

[LookAtMeGo]

That's not how it works, at all.

The connection is used to share calculation results. Server steps in letting the console run the game (the rest of it minus heavy physics stuff).

2-4mbps is the data rate required. The processing power could be anything.

Alright. I think I need to learn about how it all works.. I don't get it. Either way, I'm excited about it.

 

[blast processed]

from this

more like

.

 

[mocoworm]

I can believe it.

MS has Azure, the biggest and most powerful cloud powered network currently in existence. If they tap even a fraction of that power, it's a wrap. No other console can conceivably come close to offering a similar experience.

I get that people are sceptical, but you really shouldn't be. We're living in a cloud powered world and MS is that the forefront. They have the infrastructure and now it's up to developers to show they have the abilities to tap into it.

Exciting times ahead.

Great post.

 

[llAuburnll]

Isn't really though, is there?

There's a handful of people talking about how cool something might be, getting shot to shit by a crowd of people who absolutely refuse to believe that anything from the company that makes Windows might actually be good.

As usual.

You're not wrong. But you won't find sympathy here. And not from him. But I agree with you. I mean honestly RFG comparisons, it's the same as remote play, why be so wasteful? Jeez.

 

[On Demand]

I can believe it.

MS has Azure, the biggest and most powerful cloud powered network currently in existence. If they tap even a fraction of that power, it's a wrap. No other console can conceivably come close to offering a similar experience.

I get that people are sceptical, but you really shouldn't be. We're living in a cloud powered world and MS is that the forefront. They have the infrastructure and now it's up to developers to show they have the abilities to tap into it.

Exciting times ahead.

It's like your post are sarcastic and serious at the same time. I can never be sure.

 

[Alienous]

IIRC, it's running off the same servers they use for all their cloud computing services. So buying more servers benefits them long after Crackdown's player base drops.

That's the thing though - MS doesn't have to dedicate specific servers to Crackdown for a specific amount of time. When the game needs more servers more will come to life for it. It's supposed to be an automatic process so as the audience gets smaller more resources will be freed up and if the game has a big resurgence down the road the servers will work to accommodate it.

Oh, well fair enough then.

 

[muleyman13]

The destruction in that Crackdown video is pretty cool stuff, I will readily admit that. But is it worth the price of always having to be online to be able to do it? Not for me. I would honestly rather have a game with Red Faction Guerrilla-style destruction that I can run on my own system.

Totally agree, Crackdown is one of my all time favorite games and as much as I am excited in this potential, it is a future I won't take part in, but that is just me.

 

[justgames7604]

After watching the video....

The funny part is that at the end he says "This is a demonstration on the technology that we are building, This is not fully representing of the gameplay"

Are you for real? Like I just can't believe it. Of course it's fucking not. He said a hundred times he uped their weapons and all they did was shoot a building in an empty half made world. You think bloody crack down is gonna be fucking rocket launcher machine guns in a barren half made world?

 

[Zedox]

I'd bank money on the Xbox Two (hah) in six years having a remaster of Crackdown 3 without internet connection required.

If the next Xbox has the power of 20x Xbox Ones...then sure, yea. But then you can do other calculations in the cloud for other things that the next Xbox can't or won't do. That's the beauty of the cloud. It's great for offloading things that the local client doesn't have to do. If you think the future is gonna be local calculations only then you are very shortsighted.

 

[leeh]

So what happens if someone else in the household starts watching netflix and the connection quality drops from 2 Mbs to 1 Mbs?

It'd most likely optimise by doing something like lowering the refresh rate of the physics, so it could just judder slightly on screen. If I was making this, that would be the fallback I'd use.

 

[KiefbladeMaster]

I'll wait to see a bit more but I may be shopping around for a One here pretty soon! Looked good from what was shown.

 

[styl3s]

I'm curious as to how much bandwidth this cloud shit is going to use especially considering a high % of people with broadband internet are on a 250-300GB monthly cap.

 

[SplitYourInfinities]

The destruction in that Crackdown video is pretty cool stuff, I will readily admit that. But is it worth the price of always having to be online to be able to do it? Not for me. I would honestly rather have a game with Red Faction Guerrilla-style destruction that I can run on my own system.

Well, you have to be online to play multiplayer so you don't have an alternative.

 

[mocoworm]

*hums the melody to "The Old Rugged Cross"*

Do you take requests?

 

[digita1alchemy]

Why are people acting like that MS is the only company that owns (or can buy) servers?

While you have a point, I would also argue that Microsoft has probably put a lot of work into making these kids of features as easy as possible for devs to implement into Xbox games, and as such, likely have a much more mature toolset and infastructure for doing so than Sony or Nintendo at this point.

 

[thehillissilent]

The off-loading of "complex" physics calculations to servers for processing is pretty cool and goes a step beyond what traditional dedicated multiplayer servers do today. There is no denying that. However, I just hate the hyperbole.

 

[Trogdor1123]

You sound desperate to find something wrong with it...

Something, something, ad hominem

I could easily be wrong but to me it looks off. I will watch it again to see if it was the angle or something which it could easily be.

Its a neat concept for sure. Im just not sure, or even confident, that it will end up as they have shown it.

 

[ShemhazaiX]

So can you still do all the destruction game play without the internet attached? As in, killing people by dropping buildings on them?

Also, lol, that baiting.

edit: Sorry, didn't realise it was only multiplayer that had the destruction.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

Why are people acting like that MS is the only company that owns (or can buy) servers?

I don't see that happening here, really, but we don't have any evidence of Sony or Nintendo building the same type of technology as Crackdown or a similarly scaled cloud infrastructure like Azure/Thunderhead. Maybe they are working on some similar things, but until they do, Sony and Nintendo can't exactly say, "We can do that too." The closest thing Sony has done is the Rackspace acquisition, but isn't that for PSNow? I suppose they could rent servers from Amazon or Google, but the cost efficiency isn't exactly the same as owning them yourself like with Microsoft. If this whole cloud compute think takes off in gaming, nothing is stopping other console makers from joining in, though, so I guess that's part of your point.

Thanks. Looks like the author just says it, maybe the devs are saying it at gamescom?

IGN reported it in a tweet as well, so I think so.

 

[gamechanger87]

I'm curious as to how much bandwidth this cloud shit is going to use especially considering a high % of people with broadband internet are on a 250-300GB monthly cap.

This isn't bandwidth heavy stuff. More latency sensitive. Just sending positioning data back. If you are capped and playing online games and streaming normally you should be ok.

 

[L4nnist3r]

The destruction in that Crackdown video is pretty cool stuff, I will readily admit that. But is it worth the price of always having to be online to be able to do it? Not for me. I would honestly rather have a game with Red Faction Guerrilla-style destruction that I can run on my own system.

Well the full destruction is on the multiplayer, so yeah, without being online you wouldn't be able to play it, just like any other multiplayer online.

 

[Ishan]

No, it makes it the best used cloud computing to date, which has nothing to do with XB1 hardware. You could leverage the same tech for the Vita if you really wanted to. Hell, the same tech is leveraged in your cellphone, it is called Siri. "The power of the cloud" is what allows that rapid speech processing to happen. It is like putting your Civic on the bed of an 18 wheeler and saying, "This Civic has the most torque ever!"

This . But impressive work that ms has got a team Leveraging it already . Ms has the server network to enable it but then sony can just as easily rent off amazon or something if they feel the need for a similar game etc . So company specifics aside let's see how well this works in practice . Very interesting and promising tech especially in the long run . Good on ms for putting in the funds to try and implement it well in a game.

 

[Cthulhu_Steev]

Dem Sony fanboys be like

So with this gloating it seems like it was always about the power for xbone fans, I guess. No more fun trumps all. A new dawn has arrived.

MS better hope this demo translates into the final game in all the ways Crackdown is been Crackedup to be.

 

[JaggedSac]

I dug out some posts that I made two years ago, elaborating on parts of what I argued, in case it makes it my "speculation" clearer to you.


Anyone is free to argue against that. I hope that people who try understand the difference between "being right" and "writing the last post".

You should write to Doug and tell him his Cloudgine company is doomed to fail and they should have investigated all your points before spending money on starting the company. Such a shame that such low hanging fruit issues that you bring up were not investigated.

 

[GavinGT]

I'm curious as to how much bandwidth this cloud shit is going to use especially considering a high % of people with broadband internet are on a 250-300GB monthly cap.

About 3.5 GB per 24 hours of play, assuming the game is constantly using 4mbps.

http://neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=174399936&postcount=640

 

[Skeff]

Not a language barrier at all, simply you not understanding context.


"Hey, this technology will last about 2 years"... well it's 2013 so we're already in year one so we're half way through... why bother?... huh? but sir! we just launched! nope, sorry 2013 means year one aka we're a year into 2 years, so only a year left.... ughh

Saying the technology won't get used enough because we're already half way through the gen at 1.5 years into the birth of the new consoles is disingenuous, unless you have a different point that I'm not getting.

I never said we were currently half way through the generation currently. I simply stated, correctly that if this game is released after 21st November 2016 that it would be in the fourth year of the console.

I, personally believe thus generation will likely be 6 years long and we will get next gen consoles in fall 2019, which would put crackdown around the halfway point during the generation.

I think you need to separate which posters have stated what and try not to be confrontational, really, re-read my posts again.

 

[ElTorro]

You should write to Doug and tell him his Cloudgine company is doomed to fail and they should have investigated all your points before spending money on starting the company. Such a shame that such low hanging fruit issues that you bring up were not investigated.

You realize the benefits of having a tech demo (I called it as such) to showcase to the public? For instance, this thread here. You don't have to give a damn about economic feasibility if you are following a larger strategic purpose with such a demo.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Well the full destruction is on the multiplayer, so yeah, without being online you wouldn't be able to play it, just like any other multiplayer online.

I think this could make for some really cool stuff going on in MP. It should be interesting to see what kind of stuff people come up with in the game.

 

[Mushroomer25]

So can you still do all the destruction game play without the internet attached? As in, killing people by dropping buildings on them?

Also, lol, that baiting.

The co-op & singleplayer only has 'limited destruction'. So likely no, though maybe it'll be worked into a few missions.

Multiplayer is where all of this destruction stuff is going to live.

 

[Vinc]

If this works as intended, it's freaking cool.

 

[LiquidGotti]

Lol, yes, that actuall game will feature much more activities then just shooting building till they collapse.

I'm sure he didn't mean anything like that. just covering up for when the game comes out and plays nothing like what he just showed. LOL

 

[GavinGT]

I'm sure he didn't mean anything like that. just covering up for when the game comes out and plays nothing like what he just showed. LOL

You really don't understand the concept of a tech demo...

 

[EGM1966]

So can you still do all the destruction game play without the internet attached? As in, killing people by dropping buildings on them?

Also, lol, that baiting.

No, not unless I'm misreading it. The destruction hyped for online is for online only. Offline you do not get that. It requires the online Cloud Computing.

The idea of offline cloud computing is sound the issue is bandwidth, lag and what happens if your connection drops or simply falls in speed due to throttling for a moment?

It's clever stuff (although nothing that any game couldn't make use of) but the question will be how applicable it will be and what it can really add if they have to keep it in the 2 to 4 mbps range and what the implications are for when you go offline.

Still all new ideas have to start somewhere (although this isn't technically a new idea but the concept hasn't really been pushed much so this could be the start of trying to popularize it).

 

[BiGBoSSMk23]

The off-loading of "complex" physics calculations to servers for processing is pretty cool and goes a step beyond what traditional dedicated multiplayer servers do today. There is no denying that. However, I just hate the hyperbole.

I'm not very tech savvy at all, but isn't this essentially pretty similar to Onlive and. Gaikai?

Instead of streaming a game being run another place it's streaming calculations being done elsewhere.

It's pretty cool that a graphics engine is built with that sort of streaming g technology though.

New strategy for consoles to raise the eventual ceiling they hit with graphics .

 

[NH Apache]

Not worried about the Mbps stuff. I'm dissapointed that it will only be for the multiplayer.

Think about it though. You're collecting orbs but wait, you blew up a 500ft building and now you can't get the orb. This is the most simplistic explanation. Others include: needs to kill/get shit from a boss in a building but you already blew it up, etc. etc.

I would agree that this does make the xbox more powerful. It is providing an experience that was not possible before without the servers. This doesn't mean that other consoles can't do the same; MS is ahead of the game because they already have the farms up and running as well as the fact that they are internal to MS so it is cheaper for them to do extensive testing.

The potential for this is huge both in single and multi. Possibly this is one of the reasons why they wanted to stress the always on connection.

 

[gamechanger87]

I'm sure he didn't mean anything like that. just covering up for when the game comes out and plays nothing like what he just showed. LOL

So he people whom were demoing the same thing were paid off by M$?

It's a tech demo but it's what they are saying the game will be. It's standard commentary.

 

[FLAguy954]

Here you go. 10 min demo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFWIpAPvF-Q&feature=youtu.be

Note: Weapon damage is significantly increased so that it doesn't take all day to destroy stuff. People at gamescom are playing this demo.

Wow, that is some very impressive tech. Good job Microsoft.

 

[SomTervo]

There's a handful of people talking about how cool something might be, getting shot to shit by a crowd of people who absolutely refuse to believe that anything from the company that makes Windows might actually be good.

As usual.

I don't think that's quite what's happening.

I think people just don't have a firm grip on what 'server-side-' or 'cloud-based-' computation means. They can't get over the idea that sending a load of physics-computation data (ie just numbers, a spreadsheet) through a small data pipe to a server, which then sends back rendering instructions, can generate a game simulation like this in real time.

People ITT are trying to equate all of it to things they understand, things consoles or the internet typically do – computation power, or bandwidth, or whatever.

It is pretty hard to get your head around. I someone needs to make a whole thread describing how this shit really works. Hopefully Digital Foundry will cover this soon.

 

[Raide]

A strange statement to make certainly but the footage of CD3 looks really cool. Sure games have done destruction but this is on another level. Interesting to see if any other developers try it. Imagine Battlefield using a similar idea.

 

[LiquidGotti]

You do realize that people are playing that demo themselves. How would this be faked? You are just trolling at this point

http://metro.co.uk/2015/08/05/crackdown-3-hands-on-preview-the-xbox-one-killer-app-5329378/

and you do realize thats not an xbox one they are playing on? its not really "the real game" so to speak. taking hard to the fact that the game wont actually play like that.

 

[JaggedSac]

You realize the benefits of having a tech demo (I called it as such) to showcase to the public? For instance, this thread here. You don't have to give a damn about economic feasibility if you are following a larger strategic purpose with such a demo.

So Cloudgine as a company was created specifically for MS? Because otherwise, economic feasibility certainly plays into telling clients about the likely costs of utilizing your middleware. A techdemo doesn't solve that.

 

[MaDKaT]

Not discrediting the tech or the potential benifits(the pre-alpha demo didnt wow me though), but Im not feeling this. Games already ship half baked, requiring massive patches and DLC. Now they are going to offload more and more. Guess as I get older I just grow more fond of standalone products.

 

[justgames7604]

I'm curious as to how much bandwidth this cloud shit is going to use especially considering a high % of people with broadband internet are on a 250-300GB monthly cap.

Yea 4mbps will eat through that cap each month rather easily.

 

[Mr. Nice_Guy]

Once again I'll be waiting for the release because regardless of what I am shown I don't believe any of it till it is in my media room, on my tv, and I am the one playing it on my console; because what incentive to have have to believe someone who is only trying to sell me something?

Would certainly like for it to be true, because it look awesome; but until I have it, everything is questionable.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

About 3.5 GB per 24 hours of play, assuming the game is constantly using 4mbps.

http://neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=174399936&postcount=640

Yeah, that's not too bad. Even 4 hours a day in a 31 day month would only be 18GB towards your cap.

 

[Industrialist]

So with this gloating it seems like it was always about the power for xbone fans, I guess. No more fun trumps all. A new dawn has arrived.

Well apparently the demo looks good and is incredibly fun, so I don't see why the presence of one necessarily rules out the presence of the other.

With that said, given that PlayStation 4 was declared as more powerful since day one, it would definitely explain a lot.