How much do they spend on that infrastructure?
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Respawn Entertainment gives more detail about the Cloud and Titanfall
- Thread starter ComputerMKII
- Start date
How much do they spend on that infrastructure?
I have no idea what the cost is for us or for other developers. I just know its going to be much cheaper for us to use this stuff than to buy and rack thousands of servers. Also, contrary to popular GAF-belief we haven't sold our soul to MS. I've seen exactly zero moneyhats being worn around the office. Don't know how many times we can explain our decision for platforms on Titanfall.
Well I think my point of contention is that MS has been PR'ing the hell out of the cloud.
And that has gotten some people to believe that having a cloud infrastructure isn't possible on other platforms..
Basically The ONLY benefit of Azure for XB1 devs is that it may be cheaper on that platform.
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
So basically you didn't read the thread....amazing.
That's a shame, it's quite chic.
What does this mean then, "Most importantly to us, Microsoft priced it so that its far more affordable than other hosting options their goal here is to get more awesome games, not to nickel-and-dime developers. " --Jon Shiring
That's unexplainable. No doubt you guys are making a great game, so just wear the hats happily.
How can you actually read this thread and come away with that conclusion?
Wishmaster92
Member
Keep up the good work Respawn.
What i don't get was Microsoft comment about the cloud multiplying the xbox ones power by x3. Could the cloud actually do this? I'm talking about increasing 1.2tf three times. Is it possible?
Critical Thinking?
What other benefits are there?
Before you answer, remember other platforms can use clouds just fine
I would even add another.... because its easy for developers to use they will have more time to polish the actual game which will result in us getting better games.
I really see this as this generations xbox live. Multiplayer gaming was done before xbox but xbox make it easy and seamless to the point where every game wanted to use it. I think the same will play out this generation with the ms cloud.
Maybe you should do what my post implied and read some of the thread? Specifically the posts from the folks over at Respawn. Or, the OP.
Oh I did and my point still stands. The only difference is that it's an unspecific AMOUNT of dedicated servers with bots.
It's neat, but doesn't live up to anything MS has spun around the "cloud power", that allegedly makes your xbone 4 times as powerful.
You state that its cheaper than to buy thousands of servers, And I'm assume this ties into the platform decision.
Did you guys look into other Cloud solutions before deciding on MS exclusivity?
And if so, Since you say there's no money hats, was the cost between Azure and say EC2 really that huge of a difference to warrant excluding Sony's Entire user-base?
Ummm every other benefit besides cost seems to be more of a Cloud benefit on a whole not really specific to Azure.
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
It's integrated into the platform. There is already software in place that allows easy access to those cloud capabilities. Other companies would have to create the infrastructure to do all the same things. Is it possible? Sure, but it's not as easy as just renting cloud space somewhere else, the software has to work with it.
It's just like the people complaining about Kinect voice recognition. The argument is similar, "this isn't new, we can already do voice commands with a headset just fine!" What people ignore is that Kinect voice is integrated into the platform, it just works. You don't have to design your own speech recognition software or license one from someone else and integrate it into your code. Kinect does all the work already, you just need to access the API.
Clearly you didn't if that is your takeaway.
So your position is that everything that anyone is doing or will do on Microsoft's servers could be done right now on Amazon's or Sony's or Google's? Actually substantiating that requires far more knowledge than you have and requires you contradict those working directly with the service.
Dude, do you really want to dig your hole any deeper? Either speak up and give specifics or be quite. Don't just come with "lol no".
In the end, it's a fucking dedicated server that runs bots. End of story.
To clarify, for you, the player, it doesn't mean jack in terms of differences to a normal dedicated server. It doesn't make your xbone magically 4 times as strong.
LyleLanley
Banned
This quote from two pages ago makes it sound like it can be used for a lot more than just dedicated servers that run bots.
TrueBlueHero
Banned
That.
I'm so thrilled to see what some first party devs (343!) Will achieve with that.
60 fps dedicated servers next Halo with potentially huge battlefields anyone?
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
All quotes from this very thread from Respawn devs themselves:
"So it’s not accurate to say that the Xbox Live Cloud is simply a system for running dedicated servers – it can do a lot more than that."
"The fact that we're using it as our dedi solution in the short term should in no way imply that's all we (or anyone else) *could* use it for. People will figure out nifty stuff to do with it! F'rinstance, I'd love to explore offloading low frequency lighting calculations for things like updated "static" lighting when the level environment changes. That's pretty far from cloud = dedicated servers."
"What Microsoft's cloud is actually capable of is much broader than what we're currently doing, so its not our place to talk about what anyone is doing or will theoretically be able to do in the future."
Potentially, you can do much stuff, but it's not feasible in real environment. Single player enhancement are out of the question (at least when it comes to computing load) since they can't be required to be online. As for multiplayer games, it'll end up being dedicated servers and not MUCH more. Of course you can compute server sided stuff like you see in an MMO that won't need to be handled by your console, but that is still considered a pretty normal server. Don't get me wrong, dedicated servers alone are awesome to have already for most games, but I don't like the PR BS MS is pulling all the time.
The only time where it could be really interesting, is if they would do a "must be online and have XXX speed internet single player exclusive" game, but I doubt that is feasible.
Brad Grenz
Member
Practically speaking? None of it. The hundreds of millions they make on dashboard ads each year alone is more than they need to run the Xbox Live service. Gold fees are just a giant slush fund they use to paper over other craters in the same business unit. Disasters like the Kin or Windows Phone have had their enormous losses hidden under a pile of free money from Gold subscribers.
Being that the service is available right now and is directly comparable to Amazon's and Google's service.
Also that the Azure platform is not an Xbox exclusive platform, i can use an educated guess and say.... Most probably yes.
SlipperyMoose
Member
I'm so glad the Respawn guys jumped in. Good job guys.
Oh, so their infrastructure is free? Or are we going to play games with nonsense about how a company spending from pile A is TOTALLY DIFFERENT from spending money from pile B?
So there is no difference between the Azure service Microsoft offers to everyone and the XBox servers based on Azure technology Microsoft is offering to devs? You should share the rest of your secrets. You seem to know all this stuff no one else does and on top of that it seems to go against what we've been told to this point.
lastflowers
Banned
I love how people bring up the kin as an enormous loss...it wasn't. It was a failed product that was DOA to fill contracts. The loss was incredibly minimal because of the pull right away. Win phone is also not nearly a 'disaster' like you claim
The thing is, their traffic and infrastructure is paid by the stuff you buy already. If you pay for a game on XBL, you just paid their cost for the stuff. Most games use p2p connections, and only require a minimal amount of data sharing with a master server. And both, Sony and MS are VERY bad when it comes to that. At least in europe, it's beyond horrendous.
For games that use dedicated servers, the publisher / devs pay for, or at least subsidize it. That cost, yet again, is paid by the players that buy the game.
Ads, XBL and the new PS+ are not required to have a basic infrastructure or online store. You don't pay for steam either - for a reason. You fund them by buying games. It's really just a cash in. I'm not doubting that that funding isn't used to further improve online stuff - but I highly doubt they don't cut a huge margin as profit off that.
Can you give any examples? No? Too bad.
I browse through this thread every now and then. People keep saying MS azure is going to make the Xbone special, powerful, do something no other platform can do, but they are never able to provide specifics. AI on servers, Drivatars? For pete's sake these are things that are done years ago, repackaged in modern day marketing speak. If you want to sell it as something unique, sure, prove it, give an example. I think the fact that even Respawn is admitting they are not doing something unique with Azure is telling. Saying that sometime in the future, somebody is going to do something special is not good enough.
As far as I know and have read, no there is no difference, there aren't any specific Xbox Dedicated Azure Servers. There are just a huge number of blank servers controlled by a Hyperviser that provides virtualization services... thats why devs say they dont need to bother about dedicated servers, because they can piggie back on Azure and Quickly create a virtual server to host XBL services where ever they are needed, and when they are not needed, the server can be quickly wiped and have some completely different service Virtualized on that same hardware.
If you read the first post the Dev talks about this a bit
Brad Grenz
Member
I love how people bring up the kin as an enormous loss...it wasn't. It was a failed product that was DOA to fill contracts. The loss was incredibly minimal because of the pull right away. Win phone is also not nearly a 'disaster' like you claim
Yeah, just over half a billion dollars. Totally minimal loss. But you're right about Win Phone, it's more of a never ending money pit than a one time disaster.
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
Read my other posts in this thread, already been answered. Although your post just pretty much proves that you don't even want examples, you'll just continue to believe whatever you want.
that isn't really saying much tho. Nothing but theories. Just think about it for a minute and you'll realize that it's a pretty unrealistic for a single player environment and doesn't mean all that much for multiplayer other than better latency and a bigger world. In the end it all boils down to be a dedicated server that is easy to set up and handle for the devs. That alone, is a great feature tho.
I hope Sony will offer a similar concept for the devs.
http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-xbox-one-whats-windows-got-to-do-with-it-7000015684/
"Using Azure technology" is not necessarily the same as using the Azure service as it exists for the public today.
TrueBlueHero
Banned
While I think that you're dead wrong even IF that's the only difference it's a huge one.
The question is not whether or not it's possible for other parties from a technological point of view - it's all about the willingness to push the technology even if it's unprofitable for the provider in the short term.
It would have been easily possible for Sony to incorperate voice chat for PS3 from the beginning yet they didn't do it.
Instead they've played catch up the whole generation.
Behind all that PR MS does have a clear vision. They are certain that next gen is going to be all about online and connected experiences. And they will once again pioneer where others just follow.
Monumental
Banned
The sheer ignorance it takes for someone to say "the only benefit of this is cost" is astounding.
It's like how Microsoft created a system wide Online Network for the Xbox called Xbox Live, and Playstation fans rebuke it by saying..."that's nothing special, any dev can create their own servers and network and make their game go online individually, games have been going online for decades".
A platform holder having a worldwide cloud server service and offering it to ALL devs at a low cost is vastly different and advantageous then devs individually going to Amazon or whoever else to get virtual dedicated servers for their own game (with no discount either).
If and when Sony creates their own worldwide cloud server service and offers it to all playstation devs for an extremely low price...THEN you can say that Microsoft doesn't have any meaningful advantage with Azure.
It's like how Microsoft created a system wide Online Network for the Xbox called Xbox Live, and Playstation fans rebuke it by saying..."that's nothing special, any dev can create their own servers and network and make their game go online individually, games have been going online for decades".
A platform holder having a worldwide cloud server service and offering it to ALL devs at a low cost is vastly different and advantageous then devs individually going to Amazon or whoever else to get virtual dedicated servers for their own game (with no discount either).
If and when Sony creates their own worldwide cloud server service and offers it to all playstation devs for an extremely low price...THEN you can say that Microsoft doesn't have any meaningful advantage with Azure.
When people say it is the only benefit, it just means that that is the only unique thing it offers, not that it is not a big deal. Low cost, efficient servers for devs to use are of course a big deal.
I doubt that anyone says this is a bad thing, or that it is not beneficial, but it's not "4 times more powerful than without the cloud"-amazing. MS is at fault here yet again, for horrendous communication and PR spinning.
Most probably, there is nothing that makes Azure "for XBox" different from vanilla Azure, from a technical point of view. What would be?
The thing is, as many have stated, that, in the end, a cloud provides very general computation and storage resources that you are free to do with whatever you want. It is quite meaningless to speak of "dedicated servers" vs "other stuff" as both are "just" software running on a remote server. The interesting question is, what can you do algorithmically and software-architecture-wise? And does cloud computing make a difference in this respect?
A "hybrid" game that runs both in the cloud and on local hardware, considerable limitations apply, for instance bandwidth, latency, and reliability issues (from relatively highly fluctuating quality to crashing nodes or dropped connections). That alone highly restricts the range of application. In addition, every subsystem that you make "cloud-based" is now a distributed software system which is harder to engineer/test. Moreover, Azure runs, in the end, on virtualized commodity servers. Their single-thread performance will be lower than that of a console's dedicated processor. If you want to leverage the performance that a cluster of virtualized servers can give you, you have to implement a potentially time-critical distributed algorithm, which is not trivial, to put it mildly.
In addition, everything that you make cloud-based now causes you ongoing costs to operate and maintain (in this case by Azure) the necessary infrastructure. Of course, it is interesting to debate technical possibilities, but frankly, I am very unconvinced that any developer would take considerable development and operation costs for insignificant features like lighting, especially if such things would be the only reason to require cloud-based resources. Even if Microsoft would pay the bill, they would not "throw away" resources for things hat only 1% of the technology-interessted customer base would appreciate.
All these problems are very specific, so there is little you can provide in terms of SDKs and tools that solve these functional problems in a "magical" way. Computational models like Map/Reduce or actor-based systems help from an engineering point of view, but their applicability is, again, limited. For instance, migrating algorithms to a Map/Reduce model is in most cases simply not possible/beneficial. Using actors as an architectural style for the backend gives you many benefits from a software engineering point of view, but it does not really enable you to do novel things feature-wise. And, again, it is no special sauce, but known computer science with many implementations to be used by anybody. Azure's specific architectural style (worker-nodes, etc) reduces the amount of boring "glue code" and maintenance that developers have to bother with, which is a general benefit of PaaS models, but it does not change the rules of the game.
So, again, Azure's benefits (as well as the benefits of every other cloud-based infrastructure) are costs, costs flexibility and development/maintenance efficiency. And that is huge. That is the paradigm-shift that cloud computing brings.
lastflowers
Banned
congratulations. Instead of discussing the potential merits of cloud computing and how it can interact with console players, you should just bring up how it doesn't match the PR statements.
Monumental
Banned
Name one person or dev in this thread that said a single thing about "4 times more powerful than without the cloud"-amazing.
Bingo. It's a diversionary tactic employed by those that would do anything to downplay the "cloud" and the advantages it brings to the Xbox One.
Proelite
Member
I know I won't be able to enjoy my dedicated server experience with halo 5 because MS fucked up the pr.
What advantages does the cloud really bring over traditional dedicated servers or client side processing?
I can't think of any that are of enough importance to justify the existance of cloud.
How is the cloud going to provide better AI, physics, or real time lighting? I can't see how it's technically possible to overcome latency, bandwidth, yet alone for a server to process these more efficiently then on the client.
How is the cloud going to improve the graphical quality of games? Again i can't see cloud overcoming latency or bandwidth. Sure you could pre process some graphical effects and data on the cloud, but you can also do that on the client side too....
IMHO Microsoft are just throwing the 'cloud' term around to silence any critics of the Xbox One's limited technical capabilities and resources.
I can't think of any that are of enough importance to justify the existance of cloud.
How is the cloud going to provide better AI, physics, or real time lighting? I can't see how it's technically possible to overcome latency, bandwidth, yet alone for a server to process these more efficiently then on the client.
How is the cloud going to improve the graphical quality of games? Again i can't see cloud overcoming latency or bandwidth. Sure you could pre process some graphical effects and data on the cloud, but you can also do that on the client side too....
IMHO Microsoft are just throwing the 'cloud' term around to silence any critics of the Xbox One's limited technical capabilities and resources.
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
The devs that have been posting in here seem to think that there is a lot that can be done beyond what they are using the cloud stuff for. How would you respond to them about their statements? You seem to be implying they are not being truthful.
Monumental
Banned
Try reading the thread or at least the first post.
IMHO people are just throwing around BS questions when they've either been answered over and over again or scenarios that were never claimed in the first place just to mock the capabilities of Azure and the advantages it brings to Xbox developers.
I am not implying that at all.
In fact, nothing I wrote is even contradicting them.
I am just countering "secret sauce" and "Azure is different" arguments.
I don't understand why they're all the sudden trying to pass dedicated servers off as "cloud computing." I think it's horribly disingenuous to claim that a dedicated server is an advanced new form of cloud processing... They've been around forever
I would say they're out right lying, overstating, exadurating, and grossly misrepresenting what Azure and cloud can do.
Where have my questions been answered?
You must be reading a different post to me as all i read in the first post was PR spin and words.
They have't explained at all, in any technical detail, how they're planning to overcome latency, bandwidth, packet loss, fluxuations in latency and bandwidth. Yet alone how Azure can magically do things better, more efficiently, or faster then what can be achieved on client side or via dedicated servers.
How's Azure going to make AI, physics, real time light, etc better?
How is Azure going to improve the graphical image quality of games?
How's it going to compensate for packet loss, bandwidth fluxuations, latency, and drop outs?
What does Azure allow from a graphical and technical perspective that simply cannot be achieved on client side? By this i mean physics, AI, graphics, not online services.
I get that Azure represents a cheaper more efficient alternative to dedicated servers, building own infrastructure, and its intergration into the Xbox One is going to make online services easier for developers to deliver. But all this talk of Azure allowing devleopers unlimited potential, ability to improve AI, physics, graphics, bullshit hype.
lastflowers
Banned
yep yep. As been parroted out again and again by people that are actually excited about gameplay scenario changes, this isn't some crazy special sour sauce. it's merely the simplicity of its implementation (assuming it is easy) and its cheap offering that encourages developers to come up with interesting features that could be game 'changers'.
One of my basic thoughts is changing level structure of ai opponents based on the gaming collectives' history with a level. Say there are 10 different ways to enter a compound. Vanilla level has guards mainly tightly controlling 6 of the ten tightly (b,c,h,i,j,k), and 4 of them in larger paths (a,d,e,f,g). After 80% of gamers targeted a certain 5 of the entrances (a,c,d,f,g,h), guard routines are sent down by the 'cloud' to adjust their paths. Now, (a,b,c,d,f,g,h) are the tightly covered entrances with lower 'spook' meters--making these entrances much harder to use.
In Forza, they collect a lot of data on players previously to make an AI. That AI was crunched client side. With the 'cloud', they could iterate much more quickly on the algorithm to create these AIs, and also deploy them in much smaller batches. They could collect much more data and crunch it while the players console is offline rather than forcing them to wait.
In FPS, the entire global player data can be collected and analyzed. CS:GO, Valve tracks every bullet fired by every gun and where it hits other players. They track the kills/shot avg, and HS percentage, etc etc. Developers might be able to utlize that massive amount of information about how players are playing their games to create more useful client updates or dynamic map alterations.
With an RPG, you could enter a city which pings your entrance to a dev's cloud setup. Say you have some friends on your friends list, or friends of friends of friends all get lumped together into a virtual instance of the city where you can see other players. Similar to guildwars, but within a purely single-player experience. You might be able to trade loot with the players, but you can't group up. How crazy would it have been to be running around Ni No Kuni with other players that populate the cities?
Again, nothing unique, but lower cost in developing the hardware and infrastructure frees up resources to reinvest in creating different interactive experiences. My hope is to see the Demon Souls/Dark Souls inter-player relationships become more interesting as this next generation unfolds. This cloud infrastructure appears to me to indicate that the xbox team is investing heavily in these types of experiences, and encouraging developers to develop around 'interactive and dynamic' events.
EDIT: And of course my thoughts are just simple exercises...they could be completely garbage. Just my brief thoughts on such possibilities. I'm no game designer, but this and interactivity using the online systems are what I want from this generation. Increased graphics are one thing. Dynamic events and worlds and games are far, far more interesting to me.