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Dedicated Servers on Xbox One vs. PS4 - How big is this?
- Thread starter Deadly Cyclone
- Start date
Captain Tuttle
Member
why can't they just confirm it. McDonald's Burger King nonsense, just say yes or no. THAT's logic.
Moon_frogger
Member
It's on the publisher, not Sony to have dedicated servers. Most of their first party titles alerady have it. Hell bad company 2 had dedicated servers on console. There's an interesting gamasutra piece on dedicated servers in section 8. According to them it was easier to work with Sony to get dedicated servers, Microsoft certification made it difficult. So in this regard you could say that Microsoft is merely playing catch up with Sony in regards to their policies on servers.
MrPresident
Banned
It's appreciated but it's kind of late to the party. It would have been more useful back when people had slower connections.
It also depends on server distribution. Someone gaming in Iceland or the Faroe Islands could get more lag if the dedicated server lies in the UK than if it were on fast P2P within their own country.
It also depends on server distribution. Someone gaming in Iceland or the Faroe Islands could get more lag if the dedicated server lies in the UK than if it were on fast P2P within their own country.
Moneyhat
Just like they couldn't talk about ps4/wiiu versions before. It's a smart move by Ms pr because people have already brought the story they are putting out there.
Not surprised.
SneakyStephan
Banned
Welcome to 1990s pc gaming, seems like consoles are also catching up to 90's pc features such as multitasking and recording gameplay.
In all seriousness, this isn't 'huge' it's just how it always should have been, people should never pay for a game with peer2peer multiplayer.
I doubt Sony can get away with p2p multiplayer now... now that both sides don't have to justify paying 60 bucks for a game without dedicated servers people will be pulling their heads out of the sand.
In all seriousness, this isn't 'huge' it's just how it always should have been, people should never pay for a game with peer2peer multiplayer.
I doubt Sony can get away with p2p multiplayer now... now that both sides don't have to justify paying 60 bucks for a game without dedicated servers people will be pulling their heads out of the sand.
Randolph Freelander
Member
I don't think it's going to matter to the majority of players.
It for sure isn't going to matter to me, because I'm not going to pay extra to play multiplayer. I've spent the last dollar I'm going to spend on Xbox Live, and I'm not replacing it with PS+.
It for sure isn't going to matter to me, because I'm not going to pay extra to play multiplayer. I've spent the last dollar I'm going to spend on Xbox Live, and I'm not replacing it with PS+.
Naked Lunch
Member
It cannot be understated that MS actually has been preparing for this awhile now with Azure - they announced their dedicated server plans for devs and listed quite a few games taking advantage of them: Forza 5, Halo 5, Titanfall, COD. It comes off as a concerted effort on MS's part to push for servers in the new gen - in my eyes as an online gamer, its a big selling point.
On the flip-side, Sony has said almost nothing about the issue - there doesn't seem to be a grand server scheme for Sony ATM. Can Sony just flip a switch and make it happen as a lot of people are suggesting here? Remains to be seen. I tend to lean with concrete plans.
On the flip-side, Sony has said almost nothing about the issue - there doesn't seem to be a grand server scheme for Sony ATM. Can Sony just flip a switch and make it happen as a lot of people are suggesting here? Remains to be seen. I tend to lean with concrete plans.
Or maybe Sony failed in really advertising why dedicated servers are so great?
Its not like dedicated servers aren't anything special. They are. And Microsoft seem to be going out of their way to make people know that and know that they will have them.
I don't get it, the important part is not you are improving your servers, but the fact that you are telling anyone that you are doing it?
Gemüsepizza
Member
Source for this?
With the amount of policy shifting that has been done I will wait for reconfirmation on things like this. Everything pre 180's is suspect. I was under the impression the "free" Azure was for cloud processing, not necessarily free dedicated servers for gaming. Time will tell I guess.
dragonbane
Member
If you want your console Day 1 you might have a problem. I think they are both sold out.
Of course Sony 'allows' it. There are games on PS3 using dedicated servers.
According to multiple developers they did a better job than MS last gen with dedicated servers. MS had the better infrastructure of course. But Sony definitely knows about the advantages of dedicated servers and uses them as well. I expect most games to have them now, because feature parity. Devs aren't talking about it, because moneyhat or other silly stuff, similar to the 'we can't talk about version x'.
Kydd BlaZe
Member
I meant to for Call of Duty: Ghosts specifically. I'm sure that it can happen, but we'll see.
Beer Monkey
Member
There was a 360 game with dedicated servers before PS3 even shipped. Honestly I think because of Live on the OG Xbox, Microsoft was just ahead of Sony on understanding how to code p2p so Sony just took the traditional brute force approach and used dedicated servers, so early on that's all you saw with their first party releases.
It was a really inefficient, expensive approach though. Rooms full of physical consoles? It's so much cheaper and faster to scale up/down with virtual servers using blades that have a way better price/performance ratio.
Sony needs to match this, and match it fast. I don't give fucks about Killzone having dedicate servers because I don't care about Killzone. But I play lots of third party FPS each gen and I like having the definitive version. And to a shooter player, network performance is far more important than minor graphical differences.
dragonbane
Member
Fortunately I think publishers might match it themselves, even if Sony doesn't do anything special. Otherwise publishers need to invest money and time to develop and maintain a P2P solution just for the PS4 version of their games, which seems inefficient. It also might cause them to get different ratings, because of the difference. Publishers don't like that at all, so I think MS's push is going to force them to use dedicated servers on PS4 as well.
I don't think you understand how virtual machines work. They can spin up as many or as few servers as they need to handle the population in the game. Essentially if it came down to only a few people playing it, they could run a single server, and if the population grows they can spin up more to handle it.
binarymelon
Member
That was likely always the cause with most games running dedicated servers. They still require maintenance which is why they likely get shutdown. You can't support something forever. Also virtual servers still require physical resources.
If you stop trying to see this from a 'vs' perspective, all I'm saying is that if you put out a great service, it doesn't do you a lot of good if you don't tell people about it(advertise it).
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
You should have probably saw where I said "as it currently stands." Which is 100% true.
Explain? If you mean Titanfall paying for them, yeah, that's interesting. Activision basically refused to provide any dedicated serves for 360/PS3, so I doubt they provide any to PS4. The difference here is MS is providing servers for XBO, so even if Activision has to pay a bit they don't have to hold the infrastructure. So far Sony hasn't announced having servers to sell out for third party games to use as dedicated servers, if they do I'm sure Activision would pay into that too. My point is that if Sony doesn't offer, Activision isn't going to provide the servers themselves for PS4.
Mass Effect
Member
As far as CoD goes, I don't care about it so whether or not it has dedicated servers on PS4 is irrelevant to me. However, doesn't Sony have dedicated servers for most of their first-party games on PS3?
Doesn't Killzone Shadowfall have dedicated servers?
Doesn't Killzone Shadowfall have dedicated servers?
No, it's not true.
Dedicated servers for COD on PS4 have neither been confirmed or denied. Claiming that "as it currently stands" "it will have none on PS4" is simply not accurate.
They just spent $700 million in upgrading the Azure platform to support Xbox One. This isn't like a dedi for a PC where one guy has a computer dedicated as the server, this is full on server farms. They claim 300k servers, which seems more like they have the capacity to run 300k virtual machines. With the way they can spin up or bring down servers dynamically, games could always have support.
Except they don't. They pull all support a year or two down the line, the same way they did this generation.
quickwhips
Member
Sony have dedicated servers for 1st party and is not equal to providing servers at a discount cost to developers for all games. I wish Sony would clarify since I still don't know which to preorder. This is an important factor. I rank it like this. Controller, OS, Dedicated servers, 1st party games.
Regarding the benefits of the dedicated serves, isnt it not just for the players but also the dev teams. Didnt that dev from the Titanfall team state that the benefit for them from using Microsofts Azure cloud system for dedicated servers is that it massivley cuts down on dev time for setting up the multiplayer inferstructure. So instead of wasting a month on setting that up they can instead put that time into other area's of the game
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
Semantics. Are there dedicated servers on PS4 right now that we know of? No. I guess I could have said "as has been announced" but most people got my point I feel. If PS4 CoD had dedicated servers Sony would be touting that, not hiding it.
You say semantics, I say dishonesty in search of a controversy.
Something hasn't been announced /= something does not exist.
MS isn't "providing" servers, they are renting them (to anyone). If Activision wants dedicated servers for PS4 games, they don't have to provide them themselves and they don't have to get them from Sony. They can rent them from MS/Google/Amazon/Rackspace/etc... It wouldn't be any different than what they are doing on XB1.
quickwhips
Member
I think some poeple have an agenda but its still no servers until proven their are servers. Just like only some games on X1 have dedicated servers until this is proven otherwise.
Pretty much this!!!
Arent most current gen matchmaking services handled by servers anyway? Well regardless my hope that with Azure's scalability and discounted cost for publishers will result in less dropped games.
MS is providing discounted dedis and we have confirmation from 3rd party devs they are using them. Sony could do the same through a third party cloud services provider but hasn't advertised such a feature and no 3rd party Dev has confirmed ps4 dedis.
How you interpret this information in making a preorder choice is your choice.
Mihos
Gold Member
Spin me up a Chromehounds server then.
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
I have both consoles pre-ordered and am leaning to get CoD on PS4 to game with friends so rest assured, this topic is for discussion of the overall issue, not because I wanted to make some big statement.
It's less about CoD specifically and more about the long term. Microsoft has servers that pubs can rent or use, Sony does not have that same capacity from what they've mentioned. How does that affect a third party? Do they give Xbox the dedicated servers because MS makes it easy to rent servers right from them, and skip dedis on PS4 because Sony doesn't have the same offering and they'd have to go through a third party vendor?
There's a reason Activision never went to Google/Amazon before and bought servers for CoD. They must be getting a great deal and support from MS to do it, and I'm curious if Sony can provide the same. I don't see Activision going out to Google now when they refused to do so in the past.
I'm curious what people think.
My choice is to wait to hear more from MS and/or Sony before spending any money.
But, we may not know for years how well the companies' online strategies are working.
We need to see:
how much this really cost devs,
how long they can afford to keep servers running,
how they handle high and low loads of traffic,
how MS/Sony will adapt hardware/software/policies based on the lessons they will learn from real world use of their consoles and networks.
chriskun
Member
Dedicated servers are awesome, and are beneficial to both devs and consumers, but this line of thinking wreaks of entitlement. Dedicated servers cost money to run, so devs don't owe it to anyone to provide them, just like consumers don't owe them money if they wish not to purchase said game without dedicated servers. The only reason why they are offering such service now is that its either cost effective, it gave them another reason to justify their always online bullshit, or is enabling them some other strategy to make money ie push content out to people easier.
Moon_frogger
Member
No no and no. You have no idea how it works. So much misinformation in this thread in general it's funny
Moon_frogger
Member
Battlefield4 has dedicated servers on ps4. Plenty of titles will. So much misinformation. I wish I could make a thread to stop all this nonsense
Every BF release has had dedis. Your painting my post as misinformation should be directed at yourself. This is about previous p2p games migrating to dedis.
I get what you are trying to say, but take a look at the title of this thread.
Has it been said that Activision doesn't pay for server allocation on Azure anywhere? Even the Titanfall guys didn't say it was free, they just said it was cheaper than other options.
Going to go out on a limb here and say that based on the additional amount of development it would take to support 2 online multiplayer architectures plus post-launch maintenance and patching, I 100% believe the PS4 will have dedicated servers for Ghosts.
demosthenes
Member
I think this is a case of the rumors we heard before about MS paying to have nobody talk about Call of Duty other than at a MS show or something. "Don't talk about their dedicated servers, pretend they don't exist"
It's pretty clear from his latest tweets that he has no idea.
https://twitter.com/OneOfSwords/status/370228745824927745
https://twitter.com/OneOfSwords/status/370244418017951744
CassidyIzABeast
Member
If they both had dedis they would have announced it at the multiplayer reveal. The next gen version of Ghosts has dedicated servers is all they had to say. They didn't do that.