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Microsoft’s Xbox boss says Amazon and Google are ‘the main competitors going forward’

Vawn

Banned
Oh no. Last time they decided to win the hearts of gamers they better focus on kinnect and TV. I truly thought they learned a lesson. But here we go again. What is their aversion to just making the best type of games that people who play games want? Why do they always have to try winning a battle that none of their customers actually care about?

Because they find making games at the level of quality of PlayStation and Nintendo way too difficult.
 

Vol5

Member
I continue to misunderstand their strategy. Every time Phil talks like this it is literal nonsense to me. Google and Amazon are their competitors....Where and in what? Please fucking tell me on what grounds are you taking the fight to them.

A better response would perhaps of been, we have all these great studios behind us now and we intend to provide value and competition in the console, steaming & PC space. We will do better next time around.

All MS have to do is offer a killer experience with content on XSX to be back in the game....They never learn.
 

NickFire

Member
Because they find making games at the level of quality of PlayStation and Nintendo way too difficult.
No thanks, I spouted off but not for console war bullshit reasons. I'm truly just shocked they would repeat the mistakes of the past in a different way. I've been PS4 only because of how they bungled the current generation launch, but I would still say that they had the best console exclusive of all time with KOTOR, and I couldn't care less that it wasn't first party.
 

Vawn

Banned
No thanks, I spouted off but not for console war bullshit reasons. I'm truly just shocked they would repeat the mistakes of the past in a different way. I've been PS4 only because of how they bungled the current generation launch, but I would still say that they had the best console exclusive of all time with KOTOR, and I couldn't care less that it wasn't first party.

I am being serious. Just like Nintendo decided it's more profitable to add new ways to play older, cheaper technology than to compete with expensive hardware.

Microsoft simply does not have the studios capable of keeping up with either Nintendo or Sony in game quality, so they have to try to do different things to compete.

If they could just snap their fingers and have a bunch of GOTY contending software year after year like their competition, they obviously would.
 

wolffy71

Banned
No, generally speaking. You will get more bandwidth and possibly some improved latency on mobile... but you already have that in most people's house, but you are still limited by hops to the entry point, equipment latency and laws of the universe i.e. speed of light.

Even if it matched native playing - still costs more, more equipment, more electricity, more bandwidth, etc.

Game streaming on 5g will remove a lot of the "last mile" bottlenecks that come from equipment as it will simply go straight to the device. As for "improved latency" isn't that the part that needs it most
 

GHG

Gold Member
So this is the line he uses to ensure Nadella keeps funding his division.

Nadella: Phil, what the fuck is going on? We are in last place and we are getting destroyed by Sony and Nintendo, you know this can't go on forever right?

Phil: Well, you know I admire what Sony and Nintendo are doing, they're doing a great job, but they're not really our competitors. If you look at what Amazon and Google are doing, we're in 1st place and we're wiping the floor with them!
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
No, generally speaking. You will get more bandwidth and possibly some improved latency on mobile... but you already have that in most people's house, but you are still limited by hops to the entry point, equipment latency and laws of the universe i.e. speed of light.

Even if it matched native playing - still costs more, more equipment, more electricity, more bandwidth, etc.

5G speeds are faster than a lot of people have in their homes right now. It's going to change a lot, including playing games from the cloud.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Game streaming on 5g will remove a lot of the "last mile" bottlenecks that come from equipment as it will simply go straight to the device. As for "improved latency" isn't that the part that needs it most

5G is way too overhyped especially in cities without clear line of sight/no obstacles. Prepare to readjust expectations in densely populated urban environments...
 

DanielsM

Banned
So this is the line he uses to ensure Nadella keeps funding his division.

Nadella: Phil, what the fuck is going on? We are in last place and we are getting destroyed by Sony and Nintendo, you know this can't go on forever right?

Phil: Well, you know I admire what Sony and Nintendo are doing, they're doing a great job, but they're not really our competitors. If you look at what Amazon and Google are doing, we're in 1st place and we're wiping the floor with them!

Phil knows this shit isn't going to work. The alternative was, no job.
 

DanielsM

Banned
Game streaming on 5g will remove a lot of the "last mile" bottlenecks that come from equipment as it will simply go straight to the device. As for "improved latency" isn't that the part that needs it most

You might get some improved latency onboarding to the carriers network but you're still in the same boat as everyone else as far as routing. I'm not sure latency across the interwebs has actually improved much of any in the last 20 years. Not sure if anyone has done any studies on that... marginal at best. More bandwidth for sure but improved latency not so much.

I have a brand new technology that solves all the cons of game streaming... its called native gaming.

Really game streaming is generally a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.
 
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wolffy71

Banned
5G is way too overhyped especially in cities without clear line of sight/no obstacles. Prepare to readjust expectations in densely populated urban environments...
Yeah theres definitely gonna be some things to overcome. Its gonna take a lot of transmitters or whatever they will be.
 

nikolino840

Member
Maybe they know something that we don't know...for Microsoft xcloud Is something new so they don't want to lose the streaming market before starting the service
For console they are already working for years so they know how to work
 

kyoji

Member
So, now streaming is the best way to game because of what Phil said? And Sony is screwed because they can't do game streaming, only Microsoft, Google and Amazon (please ignore PlayStation has been doing game streaming YEARS before any of them).

Phil Spencer fanboys like Gavon West Gavon West crack me up. They talk out both sides of their mouths as much as their spiritual PR leader.
/Thread
 

GHG

Gold Member
What astonishes me is that they keep making these same mistakes, chasing a userbase that doesn't exist.

They did the same thing at the start of this gen, chasing a casual user base that were already happily catered for on other devices. The next water cooler they said. That went well.

People who are real casual gamers play mobile games. They want their simple tappy mobile games that they can play while watching Netflix, they don't want to stream a game that actually requires their attention and takes away half of their available bandwidth for Netflix. These people want games they can play while on a train or on a plane, situations where you categorically don't have a stable Internet connection.

It's like they see big figures like 7 billion people on earth, get all excited and think there are 7 billion people out there just waiting to jump on whatever grand idea they think they are cooking up. He's talking about 7 billion people while his user base outside of America is on life support.

Serious question, has this guy even traveled? Has he come to the middle east? Has he been to Africa? Been around parts of Asia that aren't Japan? Has he seen the utter state of the infrastructure in a lot of these places? Has he seen the Internet in large areas of these places? Has he actually smelt poverty? If you want to talk about 7 billion people, how about we work on making sure all 7 billion of those people have strong and stable Internet connections along with food and water on the table before expecting them to invest in your game streaming platform?

Stadia should act as a warning to everyone, but they see them as "competition" and want to follow them off the edge of the cliff? It's baffling.
 
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Great Hair

Banned
PS4 Pro is a competitor to the Xbox One S and not X anyway ... why is this encarta guy still in charge?

They have indeed destroyed the console business.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Not sure what you mean, seems like you are taking my comments out of context. It means the technology should generally work the same on prem or on your local hardware as it does in remote location say in a datacenter or cloud service provider.... at least that was my point.

Yeah I get that you are a proponent of "cloud agnostic" solutions.. no specific serverless tech that sort of thing. I'm simply saying the benefits of being a cloud provider are huge; there is no envisioned consumer service anywhere near as costly as game streaming. Co-location centers aren't necessarily set up for running thousands upon thousands of GPUs nor are they as geographically dispersed as the needs of a game streaming provider. They might have edge nodes for stuff like data caching but game streaming is gonna suck if you aren't actually close to the DC w/ the GPUs.

Of course, like I said... not sure what you win in game streaming...no real demand.

And I 100% agree, said the same thing in the post right above the one you quoted. This is executives dreaming up demand IMO.
 
D

Deleted member 775630

Unconfirmed Member
What's wrong with what he is saying. If some gamers really prefer gaming via the cloud, Sony will have PS Now... So what's with the insecurity that Spencer is just saying that only AWS GCP and Azure are able to provide proper services via this? Why does everyone keep talking about consoles when this has nothing to do with it...
 

Vawn

Banned
Lmao at the mind fuckery in here.

Microsoft does not want to be the forum darling for neckbeards, it’s focused on the billions of potential gamers out there which will be tapped through streaming

I'm sure they wanted to sell more than their competition too, but they never have been able to do so.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Honest question, do you guys think 5G will have any impact on how this will or won't work?

It will have some impact. But......

- How much will 5G cost?
- How accessible will 5G be?
- How much data per month will my 5G plan have?

There's so many questions.

Yeah theres definitely gonna be some things to overcome. Its gonna take a lot of transmitters or whatever they will be.

And will this be healthy?
 
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IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
No, generally speaking. You will get more bandwidth and possibly some improved latency on mobile... but you already have that in most people's house, but you are still limited by hops to the entry point, equipment latency and laws of the universe i.e. speed of light.

Even if it matched native playing - still costs more, more equipment, more electricity, more bandwidth, etc.
5G also suffers from packet loss when their towers are busy; wireless tech in general is fine for anything that can cache or load asynchronously like a web site but for game streaming it's going to be a crapshoot. Should work fine some of the time then during peak hours or on a different tower you'll have a shit experience.

Forget about doing it while actually on a train or something; the hops between towers will not work with game streaming.. it's fine for stuff like video streaming because of caches, but even a switch between towers that takes a half a second will kill a game streaming connection.
 

NickFire

Member
It will have some impact. But......

- How much will 5G cost?
- How accessible will 5G be?
- How much data per month will my 5G plan have?

There's so many questions.
We don't know the specifics, but we know enough to avoid the rabbit hole of "will 5G make streaming realistic for most people." Shit man, a few too many snap chats by my wife used to cost me an extra $60 a month.
 

Aidah

Member
I see it jumped from 2 billion "gamers" to 7 billion people. Anyway, zero down 7 billion to go.

I've yet to see game streaming show any kind of meaningful demand, despite many attempts including one from their "main competitors".
 
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kyoji

Member
Lmao at the mind fuckery in here.

Microsoft does not want to be the forum darling for neckbeards, it’s focused on the billions of potential gamers out there which will be tapped through streaming
so what was there focus the past 3 generations? and how did that work out for them? serious question
 

Psykodad

Banned
No thanks, I spouted off but not for console war bullshit reasons. I'm truly just shocked they would repeat the mistakes of the past in a different way. I've been PS4 only because of how they bungled the current generation launch, but I would still say that they had the best console exclusive of all time with KOTOR, and I couldn't care less that it wasn't first party.
I don't get why people are surprised by this. It has been very evident since PS4 started heavily outselling Xbone and MS started releasing their 1st party exclusives on PC and GamePass day 1 and whatnot.

Phil also has been talking 2 ways ever since he took over from Mattrick and people kept denying it when others pointed out that MS was going in this direction.
 
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diffusionx

Gold Member
It's true, because Google and Amazon have the potential to truly disrupt the entire game industry, and if they did that, it wouldn't be just MS that would be crushed but Sony and Nintendo too. Just because it hasn't happened yet and Stadia is a total nonstarter doesn't mean that the risk is there.

Let's be honest here, Google has been rolling MS for two decades now. They'd be stupid not to be worried.

The truth is every company is scared of Google and Amazon. Those companies are huge, run massive spying operations on their users, have virtually bottomless wallets to do anything they want to do, and lots of support from TPTB to engage in monopolistic behavior is they want to.
 
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Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
Maybe they mean that in a forward thinking way. In terms of what is being built by these companies for the future. Regardless of how they're actually doing right now, directly with the market. I think perhaps they're more focused on what they're gonna bring to the table at this point.
 

Gavon West

Spread's Cheeks for Intrusive Ads
Losers always generally have the biggest mouth, it’s like a last place team talking trash to a championship team saying they suck.
Stupid posts like these literally defy reason. What he said is true. Sony nor Nintendo can even remotely begin to compete in the Cloud space. They dont have the infrastructure for it - like - at all! Google and Amazon can and will though. When that begins, where does that leave Nintendo or Sony aside from riding Azure coat tails to stay relevant in the streaming realm?

If you dont think streaming is going to take off in a big way next gen, you're potentially blind and shouldn't even begin to call yourself a gaming enthusiast. Three of the biggest companies in the world (none of them called Sony or Nintendo) have invested billions into bolstering their cloud infrastructure/streaming platforms for next gen.

Now tell me again genius: how much has Sony or Nintendo invested in theirs?? It kills me how some of you actually think Sony or Nintendo can't be beaten or that next gen is a lock for them. They aren't untouchable. You'll see this come around next generation.
 
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Vawn

Banned
The truth is every company is scared of Google and Amazon. Those companies are huge, run massive spying operations on their users, have virtually bottomless wallets to do anything they want to do, and lots of support from TPTB to engage in monopolistic behavior is they want to.

They haven't been spying very effectively looking at Stadia wasn't what anyone was asking for.
 
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DESTROYA

Member
Stupid posts like these literally defy reason. What he said is true. Sony nor Nintendo can even remotely begin to compete in the Cloud space. They dont have the infrastructure for it - like - at all! Google and Amazon can and will though. When that begins, where does that leave Nintendo or Sony aside from riding Azure coat tails to stay relevant in the streaming realm?

If you dont think streaming is going to take off in a big way next gen, you're potentially blind and shouldn't even begin to call yourself a gaming enthusiast. Three of the biggest companies in the world (none of them called Sony or Nintendo) have invested billions into bolstering their cloud infrastructure/streaming platforms for next gen.

Now tell me again genius: how much has Sony or Nintendo invested in theirs?? It kills me how some of you actually think Sony or Nintendo can't be beaten or that next gen is a lock for them. They aren't untouchable. You'll see this come around next generation.
OK Einstein tell us again how cloud gaming is going to take off because google Stadia experiment has failed horribly so far,
Xcloud isn’t really a thing yet and you say its the best thing ever.
Amazon just delivered a package of games to me so that’s as close to any kind of gaming I’ve seen from them.
You base too much on products proven customers don’t really want, it’s been proven over and over and over .......
Relax with the personal insults you come across like a corporate shill for ”next gen“ gaming.
 

DanielsM

Banned
Stupid posts like these literally defy reason. What he said is true. Sony nor Nintendo can even remotely begin to compete in the Cloud space. They dont have the infrastructure for it - like - at all! Google and Amazon can and will though. When that begins, where does that leave Nintendo or Sony aside from riding Azure coat tails to stay relevant in the streaming realm?

If you dont think streaming is going to take off in a big way next gen, you're potentially blind and shouldn't even begin to call yourself a gaming enthusiast. Three of the biggest companies in the world (none of them called Sony or Nintendo) have invested billions into bolstering their cloud infrastructure/streaming platforms for next gen.

Now tell me again genius: how much has Sony or Nintendo invested in theirs?? It kills me how some of you actually think Sony or Nintendo can't be beaten or that next gen is a lock for them. They aren't untouchable. You'll see this come around next generation.

"Cloud" is a made up marketing term. Technically I run cloud services from my house and have for about 15 years before Azure even existed. No I don't think Sony or Nintendo want to compete in a more generic "cloud" services type market, but the truth of the matter is both of them offer "cloud" services. The problem is people like you that really don't understand the tech and overblow what are marketing terms, and don't fully grasp what they are and acting as if you do.

At the end of the day, gaming is not much different than it was 15-20 years ago, not at the root of the tech.

What specifically is Microsoft doing with Azure which isn't being offered anywhere else in gaming? What exactly are everyone that is not using Azure for some of their tech missing out as far as gaming?
I'll await your answer.

(maybe I can show you the errors of your ways, if you allow me to do so)
 
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That's Xcloud/PSNow, I was talking about whole infrastructure. Well Sony going to use Azure, just for PSNow?

no they are not going to use Azure for PSnow or things directly related to 3d, azure works as virtualized machines that is good for business applications, database that sort of things but to do 3d graphics you need 3d hardware, PSnow uses ps3 hardware to run ps3 games(probably ps1 and ps2 games too) you are redirected to one of these machines to play

3123791-7653159578-30116.jpg



azure offers GPU for your virtual machines and you can scale it but that doesnt mean that you will run virtual PS4 or PS5 games on a virtual machine that uses a nvidia GPU and intel xeons

maybe sony can use it to run the frontend of PSnow servers that redirect users, if its cheap, but the heavy load run on custom hardware that include the console hardware
 
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M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
no they are not going to use Azure for PSnow or things directly related to 3d, azure works as virtualized machines that is good for business applications, database that sort of things but to do 3d graphics you need 3d hardware, PSnow uses ps3 hardware to run ps3 games(probably ps1 and ps2 games too) you are redirected to one of these machines to play

3123791-7653159578-30116.jpg



azure offers GPU for your virtual machines and you can scale it but that doesnt mean that you will run virtual PS4 or PS5 games on a virtual machine that uses a nvidia GPU and intel xeons

maybe sony can use it to run the frontend of PSnow servers that redirect them if its cheap, but the heavy load run on custom hardware that include the console hardware
Then Sony is going to use Azure for game servers, no? That's like what I thought that deal was about. I was not even talking about streaming services. But rather online functionality in games/MP in games.
 

DanielsM

Banned
Then Sony is going to use Azure for game servers, no? That's like what I thought that deal was about. I was not even talking about streaming services. But rather online functionality in games/MP in games.

There is only an agreement to work on certain technologies, an understanding. My guess is the virtualization of consoles as both Microsoft and Sony are using rack mounted consoles. (guess on my part) Of course, sony could be helping with the actually game streaming services since they have been involved in game streaming to a degree since 2006 or further back.

My real guess is not much is going on.

As far as game servers, I assume they would make the software somewhat portalable to move to multiple providers but either way.... the end user really has no idea and it neither adds or subtracts to the overall gaming experience.

What does it matter if a game server is on-prem, at a co-location, at rackspace, at google, at microsoft, at AWS? The experience really isn't going to change much if anything, generally speaking.
 
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Then Sony is going to use Azure for game servers, no? That's like what I thought that deal was about. I was not even talking about streaming services. But rather online functionality in games/MP in games.

if azure is cheap then is a good alternative but if amazon or google are cheaper then sony or any game publisher will use them instead to run their servers or run their own servers if they can manage the load or part of the load
 
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Bkdk

Member
Actually that’s what I’ve been thinking as well. Power of the cloud will come true within 10 years and bring physics into new heights. Google has deepmind AI,l which will improve and change gaming in a fundamental way.

A functional dymanic AI that will offer huge amount of choices and consequences in a gaming world is the best counter for Sony’s linear story driven games.

Sony actually needs a miracle ps5 gen so they can fund all these cloud and AI research MS, google and amazon have.
 

kyoji

Member
OK Einstein tell us again how cloud gaming is going to take off because google Stadia experiment has failed horribly so far,
Xcloud isn’t really a thing yet and you say its the best thing ever.
Amazon just delivered a package of games to me so that’s as close to any kind of gaming I’ve seen from them.
You base too much on products proven customers don’t really want, it’s been proven over and over and over .......
Relax with the personal insults you come across like a corporate shill for ”next gen“ gaming.
He is one bro, hes just like voost kain, idk what happened at microsoft HQ but they didnt attend the same seminar classes as currypanda on how to disguise astro turfing
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
There is only an agreement to work on certain technologies, an understanding. My guess is the virtualization of consoles as both Microsoft and Sony are using rack mounted consoles. (guess on my part) Of course, sony could be helping with the actually game streaming services since they have been involved in game streaming to a degree since 2006 or further back.
Will see, but my post in here first, was about MS vs Sony shutting down game servers eg. Driveclub. But like it was GT5 very soon, that flying girl game...memory common....Gravity Rush 2 and so on, that's what I meant. But I don't know what the agreement is when it comes to Sony and Azure, but one can dream right? Since for backcompat this is must.

if azure is cheap then is a good alternative but if amazon or google are cheaper then sony or any game publisher will use them instead to run their servers
But there was this agreement, with Sony and MS with sharing technologies...
 
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DanielsM

Banned
Will see, but my post in here first, was about MS vs Sony shutting down game servers eg. Driveclub. But like it was GT5 very soon, that flying girl game...memory common....Gravity Rush 2 and so on, that's what I meant. But I don't know what the agreement is when it comes to Sony and Azure, but one can dream right? Since for backcompat this is must.

I'm assuming Sony no longer wanted to manage the backend, but even if it was on Azure the backend built on top of Azure would still have to be managed....I mean it can help not having to physically manage servers but there is still costs and management involved.... Azure or AWS don't really solve all those issues.

The game server software is still built and running on something, there is still management involved.
 
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