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[Synth]

In the absence of empiric evidence, we can still examine the incentives behind a behaviour (which we have done), and evaluate the sincerity of a statement. Microsoft have more incentive to not be entirely truthful about their server costs (good PR), than they have in giving away their server farms for free when end-users can play the same game on a competing platform anyway (bad finance). Unless there is a clause that they didn't tell you about.

That's a pretty pointless exercise though, as it simply relies on a load more unknowns. We can only view the situation from the point of a consumer, with no knowledge how MS weighs the pros and cons of the decision. Even then I already stated how the free X1 servers essentially only equates to a discount for multiplatform games due to every other platform requiring payment... and selling available server resources at a discounted price is still preferable to not selling it, and having it sit there idle. So there is a reasonable incentive that they may have to offer the servers outside of exclusive arrangements. It's not bad finance if any time a user plays that game on a competing platform it ends up getting you paid. That is a far better alternative to them playing on that platform and you seeing nothing. This is why Office is on iPad, despite the fact that they would prefer you to use it on a Surface (where it is offered free). So they can actually obtain good PR, whilst also attracting additional business (good finance) at the same time.

But you're much happier to simply assume everything they say is lies.

 

[BBboy20]

Desperate Times Comes Desperate Measures have never become more truer then this.

 

[onanie]

That's a pretty pointless exercise though, as it simply relies on a load more unknowns. We can only view the situation from the point of a consumer, with no knowledge how MS weighs the pros and cons of the decision. Even then I already stated how the free X1 servers essentially only equates to a discount for multiplatform games due to every other platform requiring payment... and selling available server resources at a discounted price is still preferable to not selling it, and having it sit there idle. So there is a reasonable incentive that they may have to offer the servers outside of exclusive arrangements. It's not bad finance if any time a user plays that game on a competing platform it ends up getting you paid. That is a far better alternative to them playing on that platform and you seeing nothing. This is why Office is on iPad, despite the fact that they would prefer you to use it on a Surface (where it is offered free). So they can actually obtain good PR, whilst also attracting additional business (good finance) at the same time.

But you're much happier to simply assume everything they say is lies.

So it's not free now?

 

[Synth]

So it's not free now?

Holy shit...

It would be free for the X1 servers, and not free for the PS4 servers.

Let's imagine the servers cost a fixed amount of $1000 per platform. The X1 servers are free, so the dev pays $0 for them. The PS4 version is not free so the dev pays $1000 for them. To the Azure team this would be equivalent in revenue as if they had offered the servers at a discounted rate of $500 per platform. Which is still better than not selling any, and watching Amazon get $2000.

This does not change the fact that the X1 servers were offered for free in this scenario... Surely this isn't too complicated for you to follow?

 

[lifeexpectancy]

Exactly. I love TF but the server lag is just as frequent and at least as jarring as the frame-rate problems. Additionally, the supposed "AI off-loading" we've been told is handled by "the cloud" is at best suspect due to the simple fact that what little AI is actually used for grunts is essentially brain-dead...while the AI for the Titans is essentially "follow the leader". In other words, when I think of Titanfall the last thing I think of is impressive AI, stable frame-rates, or incredible net-code. The game has an addictive quality to it *despite* these weaknesses and certainly not because there is some persceptible magic happening due to Azure that makes the online experience any better than just about any other online MP game I've played on 360 or PS3 (on a side note I experience zero lag on Ghosts PS4, Left 4 Dead 2 (360), etc...). The marketing bullshit is so deep on this subject we need hip-waders.

Yup. I thought dedicated servers would lead to less WTF moments than were experienced in the peer-to-peer scenario last gen, with host advantage and all that. Turns out that's not the case so far. Maybe TF's netcode just sucks arse and someone else will do it better next go around, but for now I don't see any benefits whatsoever to having dedicated servers or 'cloud processing'.

 

[onanie]

Holy shit...

It would be free for the X1 servers, and not free for the PS4 servers.

Let's imagine the servers cost a fixed amount of $1000 per platform. The X1 servers are free, so the dev pays $0 for them. The PS4 version is not free so the dev pays $1000 for them. To the Azure team this would be equivalent in revenue as if they had offered the servers at a discounted rate of $500 per platform. Which is still better than not selling any, and watching Amazon get $2000.

This does not change the fact that the X1 servers were offered for free in this scenario... Surely this isn't too complicated for you to follow?

Why would developers necessarily use Azure for the PS4 as well? If they don't, Microsoft loses out big time.

 

[SyenceLabb]

Give me dat secret sauce!

 

[CadetMahoney]

Desperate Times Comes Desperate Measures have never become more truer then this.

pretty much, desperate MS best MS.

 

[Synth]

Why would developers necessarily use Azure for the PS4 as well? If they don't, Microsoft loses out big time.

Why would they bother using a completely different online implementation for the other platform?

X1 with Azure + PS4 with Azure = $1000
X1 with Azure + PS4 with p2p = Potentially different games. PS4 version seen as an inferior online experience. (works in MS' favor anyway)
X1 with Azure + PS4 with standard dedis = Lack of dynamic scaling. Extra dev time. ~$1000 (est.)
X1 with Azure + PS4 with Amazon = Extra dev time. $1000
X1 with Amazon + PS4 with Amazon = $2000

The better question would be why would a dev not use Azure for the PS4 version as well? There's essentially no situation where it is advantageous to use something else on the PS4 side. The math works in both MS' and the developer's favor.

 

[EvB]

Why would developers necessarily use Azure for the PS4 as well? If they don't, Microsoft loses out big time.

It's a pretty petty thing to do, it would be like Microsoft refusing to use Blu Ray drives or Sony refusing to use Windows on all of their computers.

 

[BladeoftheImmortal]

If it takes 3 Xbox Ones to output at 792p then just how crappy is one Xbox One

 

[SenjutsuSage]

I don't see what the big deal is. It's not like they're lying about their infrastructure. They aren't. If they say they pretty much can guarantee and assure that 3 XB1s worth of computing power is available through their cloud infrastructure per XB1, I don't see what's so difficult to believe about that.

Now, sure, obviously there is a clear effort to market going on here, and it paints an almost misleading picture of what this truly means in the here and now, but as far as there being interesting immediate future and long term future potential for something like this in the console space, that's something I don't have a very hard time believing at all. They're already taking advantage of the exact infrastructure they're referring to in a number of games already released for the system, only in more familiar and traditional ways (as in dedicated servers for multiplayer gaming), not in the "omg 3x more power per XB1 to make your games better" kind of way, but if Microsoft makes using it as convenient as they say, I don't see why more creative applications can't emerge further down the line.

They did, after all, show off a pretty cool physics based destruction demo at BUILD, so I could see less overthetop uses for it down the line. I don't think anybody is expecting far easier 1080p or 4k gameplay to come out of this, but I don't see why some interesting things couldn't be done in games with this kind of infrastructure. I mean, it still largely depends on whether Microsoft can prove that it can be used in more creative or interesting ways for serious games, and if they can also manage to make it as accessible to developers as they suggest. We'll see, but I'm not going to immediately laugh and mock it. I would love for this stuff to not end up just being talk, because that would make me that much more excited about my purchase.

So, toss me in the cautiously optimistic camp.

 

[Synth]

If it takes 3 Xbox Ones to output at 792p then just how crappy is one Xbox One

Once again...

It’s relevant to mention that the representative talked about computing power, not graphical fidelity

It's right there in the OP...

 

[onanie]

Why would they bother using a completely different online implementation for the other platform?

X1 with Azure + PS4 with Azure = $1000
X1 with Azure + PS4 with p2p = Potentially different games. PS4 version seen as an inferior online experience. (works in MS' favor anyway)
X1 with Azure + PS4 with standard dedis = Lack of dynamic scaling. Extra dev time. ~$1000 (est.)
X1 with Azure + PS4 with Amazon = Extra dev time. $1000
X1 with Amazon + PS4 with Amazon = $2000

The better question would be why would a dev not use Azure for the PS4 version as well? There's essentially no situation where it is advantageous to use something else on the PS4 side. The math works in both MS' and the developer's favor.

You are assuming that Azure costs the same as its competition. If there is a cheaper server farm available, a developer would definitely take the free Azure server, and run with a more cost-effective farm on PS4.

 

[onanie]

It's a pretty petty thing to do, it would be like Microsoft refusing to use Blu Ray drives or Sony refusing to use Windows on all of their computers.

Rather than pettiness, how about financial incentives?

 

[Contra11]

Actually you can see the cloud

 

[Synth]

You are assuming that Azure costs the same as its competition. If there is a cheaper server farm available, a developer would definitely take the free Azure server, and run with a more cost-effective farm on PS4.

Google recently cut their cloud costs. Amazon then matched them. Azure then followed. So yes, the major alternatives currently cost roughly (exactly?) the same.

I don't even know why I'm expected to cover every last possible eventuality here tbh... you were claiming that MS would have no incentive to offer the X1 hosting free for multiplats. I think I've given enough examples of how that isn't necessarily the case. How about you give me something now, rather than simply quizzing me continuously?

 

[cookie-monster]

Ignoring the PR lies for a moment, on the financial side It's just a means of moving some of the red ink from the entertainment division (which is coming under increasing scrutiny) to the cloud division.

It means nothing for gamers, very little for third parties (if you're not writing your code for the cloud in an abstract enough way so that you can't easily switch providers then you deserve everything that locking yourself into a Microsoft solution brings).

 

[onanie]

Google recently cut their cloud costs. Amazon then matched them. Azure then followed. So yes, the major alternatives currently cost roughly the same.

I don't even know why I'm expected to cover every last possible eventuality here tbh... you were claiming that MS would have no incentive to offer the X1 hosting free for multiplats. I think I've given enough examples of how that isn't necessarily the case. How about you give me something now, rather than simply quizzing me continuously?

There are inaccuracies in your example, that is why I question it. There is nothing stopping a developer from choosing Google out of preference, and Azure being the least popular out of the big three farms only validates my impression that a developer won't necessarily use Azure for the PS4 also, while getting a freebie from Microsoft.

As cookie-monster commented, it is easy to make server swaps trivial as long as you code with that in mind.

 

[Ishan]

I don't see what the big deal is. It's not like they're lying about their infrastructure. They aren't. If they say they pretty much can guarantee and assure that 3 XB1s worth of computing power is available through their cloud infrastructure per XB1, I don't see what's so difficult to believe about that.

Now, sure, obviously there is a clear effort to market going on here, and it paints an almost misleading picture of what this truly means in the here and now, but as far as there being interesting immediate future and long term future potential for something like this in the console space, that's something I don't have a very hard time believing at all. They're already taking advantage of the exact infrastructure they're referring to in a number of games already released for the system, only in more familiar and traditional ways (as in dedicated servers for multiplayer gaming), not in the "omg 3x more power per XB1 to make your games better" kind of way, but if Microsoft makes using it as convenient as they say, I don't see why more creative applications can't emerge further down the line.

They did, after all, show off a pretty cool physics based destruction demo at BUILD, so I could see less overthetop uses for it down the line. I don't think anybody is expecting far easier 1080p or 4k gameplay to come out of this, but I don't see why some interesting things couldn't be done in games with this kind of infrastructure. I mean, it still largely depends on whether Microsoft can prove that it can be used in more creative or interesting ways for serious games, and if they can also manage to make it as accessible to developers as they suggest. We'll see, but I'm not going to immediately laugh and mock it. I would love for this stuff to not end up just being talk, because that would make me that much more excited about my purchase.

So, toss me in the cautiously optimistic camp.

okay. I'm an algorithm person . (Im not a game designer but I know how processing works and well). And yes you can have 20 gazillion amount of processing offloaded but thats not a true depiction. And yes there are benefits as weve seen but portraying it as 3x xbox one power in the cloud is very very misleading and yes us (including me) with an understanding of what it means and its intricacies on some level (its promising surely but but there are major limitations) do feel its very very wrong the way its being portrayed.

I mean techincally your pc can have access to the whole web and all its processing power just hack into everything and leverage that processing ... its half bordering on that level with the pr. Also graphic processing is a very algorithmic oriented process and latecy bottlenecks matter a LOT as with ANY other OPTIMIZATION bottlenecks MATTER and restrict what you can do pretty harshly.

EDIT: Someone with a good understanding of programming would see thru this and also appreciate its potential quickly. But the PR is just portraying it as better than it is at this stage and that is not something I am okay with as a computer science guy/ a programmer / a gamer. And this is coming from someone who wants to work with microsoft and has worked at microsoft and appreciates what they do outside the PR sphere.

 

[FeiRR]

having the cloud handle physics would be fantastic for games like battlefield and it would give it a large edge over the ps4 version. of course Microsoft would have to get EA to agree to use their servers instead of the shitty ones EA has been using for the series.

Battlefield's been using server-side calculations for many years. It hasn't stopped the game from having fundamental breaking issues. In fact, high reliance on server side made BF4 unplayable for half a year until EA decided to spend some money and upgrade their hardware. On the other hand, many reports suggest that Azure is not a magical solution to all networking issues. Its scalability isn't perfect and people had issues with Titanfall at launch. As you can read in this thread and elsewhere, the game isn't free from lag, matchmaking problems and its 6 vs 6 model is far from impressive. It's not some big step in hosting solutions. It's just another option for devs to choose.

People fall for PR so easily. They hear "free" and start celebrating. Game developers are reasonable people and know that "free" is just a PR lie. If you don't pay for servers, you're going to pay for something else. Or share your data with the service provider. Or sign a long and binding contract. There are other forms of control. We've just heard the PR blurb but those people have read the contract agreements with Microsoft and most of them chose to keep away. I understand Respawn didn't really have a choice or the choice was siding more with EA because their game is online only and they needed efficient server architecture. But large publishers have a choice and resources to stay independent, even if it means spending money on the infrastructure.

 

[Synth]

There are inaccuracies in your example, that is why I question it. There is nothing stopping a developer from choosing Google out of preference, and Azure being the least popular out of the big three farms only validates my impression that a developer won't necessarily use Azure for the PS4 as well, while getting a freebie from Microsoft.

As cookie-monster commented, it is easy to make server swaps trivial as long as you code with that in mind.

There's nothing to stop them, but that doesn't really make it more likely. Why bother choosing Google out of preference, if you're going to need to implement Azure as well anyway? That's simply creating additional work for yourself, and ensuring that you now have two separate points of support to deal with. For simplicity it makes sense to keep the implementations the same. There's essentially nothing to gain by taking the MS servers for X1, and then pulling a screw job on the other platforms, other than potentially souring your long term relationship with them. And if MS was to stop offering the free X1 servers as a result of everyone performing a hit-and-run on them, then this simply leads to increased costs across the board for developers. It helps nobody in the end. Not MS, who stops seeing Azure revenue. Not the developers, who now see the costs of servers increase back to their previous level. And not us, who will almost certainly be right back to playing p2p once publishers decide not to bother paying the server costs again. Not even Sony benefits, as its not like they really had a horse in this race anyway.

The reasons you're coming up with aren't very logical, and seem to mostly stem from the fact that this appears to be the last holdout you have for claiming that them offering Azure servers for X1 is untrue. I'm not sure why you feel so strongly against the possibility that they may actually be offering what they say they are, but you're doing some serious gymnastics to maintain the accusation.

MS has stated very plainly what they offer. There is reason to believe it can make business sense. There's no real reason for you to throw the accusation that they're lying without proof. So why? What's troubling you?

 

[onanie]

There's nothing to stop them, but that doesn't really make it more likely. Why bother choosing Google out of preference, if you're going to need to implement Azure as well anyway. That's simply creating additional work for yourself, and ensuring that you now have two separate points of support to deal with. For simplicity it makes sense to keep the implementations the same. There's essentially nothing to gain by taking the MS servers for X1, and then pulling a screw job on the other platforms, other than potentially souring your long term relationship with them. And if MS was to stop offering the free X1 servers as a result of everyone performing a hit-and-run on them, then this simply leads to increased costs across the board for developers. It helps nobody in the end. Not MS, who stops seeing Azure revenue. Not the developers, who now see the costs of servers increase back to their previous level. And not us, who will almost certainly be right back to playing p2p once publishers decide not to bother paying the server costs again. Not even Sony benefits, as its not like they really had a horse in this race anyway.

The reasons you're coming up with aren't very logical, and seem to mostly stem from the fact that this appears to be the last holdout you have for claiming that them offering Azure servers for X1 is untrue. I'm not sure why you feel so strongly against the possibility that they may actually be offering what they say they are, but you're doing some serious gymnastics to maintain the accusation.

MS has stated very plainly what they offer. There is reason to believe it can make business sense. There's no real reason for you to throw the accusation that they're lying without proof. So why? What's troubling you?

I don't think it is difficult for anyone to grasp that Microsoft has no incentive in offering its servers for free on Xbone, when developers will pay for them anyway on the PS4, and end-users will see the same game on competing platforms. That is, without some unmentioned condition.

Meanwhile, you assume that Microsoft will gain from this simply by the goodwill, or laziness of the developers to account for server heterogeneity. The higher popularity of other competing farms (whether it is for cost, performance or both) pretty much ensures that this will be a losing proposition for Microsoft. Unless, there is some binding condition.

The most damning of all is the complete lack of current and unreleased multiplatform game using Azure for free.

But, please do continue to label my arguments as "illogical", or "last holdout", or "serious gymnastics".

 

[geordiemp]

Why would they bother using a completely different online implementation for the other platform?

X1 with Azure + PS4 with Azure = $1000
X1 with Azure + PS4 with p2p = Potentially different games. PS4 version seen as an inferior online experience. (works in MS' favor anyway)
X1 with Azure + PS4 with standard dedis = Lack of dynamic scaling. Extra dev time. ~$1000 (est.)
X1 with Azure + PS4 with Amazon = Extra dev time. $1000
X1 with Amazon + PS4 with Amazon = $2000

The better question would be why would a dev not use Azure for the PS4 version as well? There's essentially no situation where it is advantageous to use something else on the PS4 side. The math works in both MS' and the developer's favor.

You still defending the cloud....Those made up numbers look fun...

With Ps4 outselling X1 roughly 2:1 world wide here is another scenario, devs will just make games the way they do now, and if the game has servers they will farm it out to the many services out there or use their own.

They are not going to focus on Azure and make games focussed on cloud. Only MS will do that and show us that Powa LOL

Look, cloud and Azure is not knew, the biggest farms are form people like google and amazon anyway, but we are 6 months in and only 1 game has used the cloud so far, and technically it was a 792p tearing mess.

 

[Cthulhu_Steev]

Now I'm convinced.



The funding apparently saved the game from being shitcanned when Respawn ran out of cash.

And even if they did simply buy its exclusivity, that's not bullying. That'd be bribing.

It would be neither really, it would still be 'buying exclusivity' or 'helping with funding for exclusivity'

Dedicated servers are most certainly not nonsense. PS4 is certainly not going to get Azure servers and so would probably have servers provided by EA... and we all know how well they seem to pan out...

I'm pretty sure Microsoft (not Xbox) would sell Azure servers to any paying customer.

 

[softie]

They are not going to focus on Azure and make games focussed on cloud. Only MS wi
Look, cloud and Azure is not knew, the biggest farms are form people like google and amazon anyway, but we are 6 months in and only 1 game has used the cloud so far, and technically it was a 792p tearing mess.

Can you image what would've happened without the cloud? Even dumber AI (EVEN DUMBER!!111), 600p, image teared apart like a newly opened puzzle, laggy lag everywhere. Thank god there was the cloud!

 

[Sword Of Doom]

Let's start with The Cloud helping Titanfall run smoothly

 

[Synth]

I don't think it is difficult for anyone to grasp that Microsoft has no incentive in offering its servers for free on Xbone, when developers will pay for them anyway on the PS4, and end-users will see the same game on competing platforms. That is, without some unmentioned condition.

Meanwhile, you assume that Microsoft will gain from this simply by the goodwill, or laziness of the developers to account for server heterogeneity. The higher popularity of other competing farms (whether it is for cost, performance or both) pretty much ensures that this will be a losing proposition for Microsoft. Unless, there is some binding condition.

The most damning of all is the complete lack of current and unreleased multiplatform game using Azure for free.

But, please do continue to label my arguments as "illogical", or "last holdout", or "serious gymnastics".

You can't claim that there is no incentive for a company to do something whilst offering points to the contrary.

You are claiming that it's unlikely that anyone would choose to use Azure on PS4 because it is the least popular solution? That's an incentive to offer it on their platform then. It's better than having Amazon and Google running the show on your own damn console. And I still don't see people choosing to implement twice something that they can implement once, and have parity between the two platforms. It's not a case of laziness, it's a case of it not making any sense. You'd have to do the same amount of work on your non-preferred platform in order to separate them anyway. You'd just be doing the work on your preferred platform in addition, whilst adding an extra point of contact if any issues arise.

Claiming that there are NO incentives is an absolute that you simply cannot prove, and is far less reliable than any claim MS publicly makes in regards to their own services. It is very possible that there is information that isn't disclosed with us (in fact that's basically assured, seeing as we don't have a print out of any agreement), but those conditions may not contradict their public claims.

As for released games using the platform. I'd say we're likely going to have to wait until we shed all the multiplatform development that targets cross gen devices first. Pretty much every project we currently know of was deep in development long before the announcement of free X1 servers was made. I wouldn't expect any results of that change to be apparent in software designed prior to it.

I apologise for some of the terms I used in my previous post, but I seriously cannot understand why someone's default reaction to a claim a company makes about its own service would immediately be "you're lying", with no other information to go on. Other than incentive and intentions (which are highly debatable), you don't seem to be offering any real reasoning for why you would make this claim. I can't help but feel that this is down to how you view MS in general, rather than this being something you would be equally suspicious of regardless of the company involved.

 

[justsomeguy]

Thank god there was the cloud!

Xbox 360 owners everywhere agree with you.

 

[Synth]

You still defending the cloud....Those made up numbers look fun...

With Ps4 outselling X1 roughly 2:1 world wide here is another scenario, devs will just make games the way they do now, and if the game has servers they will farm it out to the many services out there or use their own.

They are not going to focus on Azure and make games focussed on cloud. Only MS will do that and show us that Powa LOL

Look, cloud and Azure is not knew, the biggest farms are form people like google and amazon anyway, but we are 6 months in and only 1 game has used the cloud so far, and technically it was a 792p tearing mess.

I was simply stating that if a dev was to use Azure on X1, it wouldn't make sense to create a completely different implementation elsewhere.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if most games ended up the way they have been this last gen (p2p... which would suck tbh), but if a dev wanted to use a setup similar to Titanfall's it does seem to make more sense to implement it with Azure, than Amazon or Google from a cost perspective (paying for one platform, rather than paying for two).

And yes the numbers were completely made up... it's an only an example. The three providers are price matching each other anyway, so any set of values would work equally as well.

EDIT: I'm off for now... tired as hell.

 

[onanie]

You'd have to do the same amount of work on your non-preferred platform in order to separate them anyway

That is incorrect, unless your multiplayer code needed to be unique for each server, for some odd reason.

Simply having Azure available on PS4 is not enough to keep a developer from looking at better server farm deals elsewhere.

If you had been skeptical of Microsoft's statements in recent times, you are more often correct than not. Unfortunate, but true. All the more reason not to believe anyone unconditionally, and I'm not sure why that would be your default position.

 

[justsomeguy]

You wouldn't build 2 back ends for your game I.e. Use 2 providers. Writing common code is the cheap bit - you then have qa and most critically the ongoing operational monitoring, fixes, etc. Plus there will be platform specific code for logging, automatic scaling. Etc. Utter insanity to use 2 providers just for the sake of it.

Only way you would do it is if you are just renting infrastructure as a service and writing your own cloud-like framework, but that's not really a "cloud computing" model.
Source: My day job.

 

[justsomeguy]

If it takes 3 Xbox Ones to output at 792p then just how crappy is one Xbox One

How long did you spend thinking up this post? Are you proud of it? Well done. No, really.

 

[Deputy Moonman]

I have no experience or knowledge of game development. So please don't think I'm acting like I know what I'm talking about. The one game people keep bringing up as an example for what a joke the cloud is is Titanfall, but wouldn't the fact that Titanfall was made to also run on the xbox 360 severely limit its performance on the xbox one? I could be completely off-base, but games that are made half and half never seem to excel on any one platform. I'm really eager to see a game made solely for the xbox one that doesn't have to split resources for an older gen system.

 

[Whitechocolatekrispies]

I have no experience or knowledge of game development. So please don't think I'm acting like I know what I'm talking about. The one game people keep bringing up as an example for what a joke the cloud is is Titanfall, but wouldn't the fact that Titanfall was made to also run on the xbox 360 severely limit its performance on the xbox one? I could be completely off-base, but games that are made half and half never seem to excel on any one platform. I'm really eager to see a game made solely for the xbox one that doesn't have to split resources for an older gen system.

No.

Titanfall was made by Respawn for Xbox One. Titanfall was then ported by a much better company to the Xbox 360.

Wait ... what?

You should expect a current gen game ported to a next gen console to run better? Not worst.

 

[justsomeguy]

I have no experience or knowledge of game development. So please don't think I'm acting like I know what I'm talking about. The one game people keep bringing up as an example for what a joke the cloud is is Titanfall, but wouldn't the fact that Titanfall was made to also run on the xbox 360 severely limit its performance on the xbox one? I could be completely off-base, but games that are made half and half never seem to excel on any one platform. I'm really eager to see a game made solely for the xbox one that doesn't have to split resources for an older gen system.

titanfall is a great example of cloud processing. A 360 alone simply couldn't handle a game with that much AI going on. By offloading the processing to a dedicated server in the cloud it makes the game possible on a machine that otherwise couldn't handle it... In one of the bluepoint interviews they mentioned that in one specific game mode (lts?) they had to reduce the nr of grunts as the 360 couldn't even process the data coming back from the cloud quickly enough.

The main thing constraining tf is that they were a new studio starting from scratch while fighting a massive lawsuit. The last days of Titanfall is a great read and tells the story wrll.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

okay. I'm an algorithm person . (Im not a game designer but I know how processing works and well). And yes you can have 20 gazillion amount of processing offloaded but thats not a true depiction. And yes there are benefits as weve seen but portraying it as 3x xbox one power in the cloud is very very misleading and yes us (including me) with an understanding of what it means and its intricacies on some level (its promising surely but but there are major limitations) do feel its very very wrong the way its being portrayed.

I mean techincally your pc can have access to the whole web and all its processing power just hack into everything and leverage that processing ... its half bordering on that level with the pr. Also graphic processing is a very algorithmic oriented process and latecy bottlenecks matter a LOT as with ANY other OPTIMIZATION bottlenecks MATTER and restrict what you can do pretty harshly.

EDIT: Someone with a good understanding of programming would see thru this and also appreciate its potential quickly. But the PR is just portraying it as better than it is at this stage and that is not something I am okay with as a computer science guy/ a programmer / a gamer. And this is coming from someone who wants to work with microsoft and has worked at microsoft and appreciates what they do outside the PR sphere.

I definitely understand what you're saying, and I know for the significant majority of what any game will do codewise, developers will absolutely still be limited by whatever's available in the box itself. They won't somehow magically get anything approaching the power of 4 xbox ones (3 on the cloud and 1 local) to somehow use exclusively on making the game perform way better graphically, or to shower a game with graphical bells and whistles that simply wouldn't be achievable on a single xbox one. Cloud compute isn't some free lunch. I get that. However, I still think there's serious potential there if developers come up with some truly creative ideas.

It doesn't even need to be graphics related, and I think everyone understands that, even those who mock it. Maybe they can do some interestingly complex looking stuff with non-essential AI behaviors to make the world feel more believable and alive. Create some kind of in-game computer terminal or station, one where if you're connected to the internet, you can actually utilize it to communicate and meet up with other people playing the game at specific locations in an open world title. And maybe it would give you a waypoint leading to where your friend is located. I just think we have to think outside the box.

There should realistically be all sorts of ways to take advantage of cloud compute for games, but obviously because there was never really anything quite like what Microsoft is doing here for the console space, and especially where it's offered for free, it's totally understandable if there aren't immediately a whole wealth of ideas on how to make the most of it.

No.

Titanfall was made by Respawn for Xbox One. Titanfall was then ported by a much better company to the Xbox 360.

Wait ... what?

You should expect a current gen game ported to a next gen console to run better? Not worst.

Console wars make people say the silliest crap, I swear. Where does this animosity for companies that don't release games on your preferred platform come from? Seriously.

 

[IN&OUT]

If it takes 3 Xbox Ones to output at 792p then just how crappy is one Xbox One

Haha...So TRUE.

 

[jem0208]

Name one high latency viable example that has been demonstrated in a high latency non-controlled environment.

In the mean time, PS now beta isn't that bad.

Doesn't the fact that the PS now beta is okay demonstrate that computations can be done with the cloud. Doesn't the fact that the ENTIRE game is running on the cloud and everything even controller input has slight lag yet it's still playable show that cloud computations would fine. Especially ones where latency isn't an issue such as AI.

 

[benny_a]

Console wars make people say the silliest crap, I swear.

Ain't that the truth SenjutsuSage.

 

[boredandlazy]

Console wars make people say the silliest crap, I swear.

Oh... WOW.

 

[David___]

Console wars make people say the silliest crap, I swear.

 

[GoofsterStud]

Doesn't the fact that the PS now beta is okay demonstrate that computations can be done with the cloud. Doesn't the fact that the ENTIRE game is running on the cloud and everything even controller input has slight lag yet it's still playable show that cloud computations would fine. Especially ones where latency isn't an issue such as AI.

No. You are comparing apples to oranges.

 

[jem0208]

No. You are comparing apples to oranges.

No I'm really not.

If the game is running on the cloud, everything has lag. If this lag is bearable even for things like controller input, then why can't it be bearable for cloud computations?

What am I missing that makes cloud computations so reliant on low latency? Even more so than something like controller input?

 

[Cthulhu_Steev]

Doesn't the fact that the PS now beta is okay demonstrate that computations can be done with the cloud. Doesn't the fact that the ENTIRE game is running on the cloud and everything even controller input has slight lag yet it's still playable show that cloud computations would fine. Especially ones where latency isn't an issue such as AI.

PSNow is only streaming video (literally from a PS3 in a server rack it seems) - it's not doing any computation - with a tiny bit of bandwidth for control input. It's not calculating physics, sending them back and updating the GPU, or running complex AI. And the cloud is not just sending data back and forth, it's got to match up in the game with your local data. It's no good calculating awesome burning rubber physics if your car is already round the first ingame corner before it gets the calculation back from the cloud.

Vita Remote Play at 30fps is great for many games as long as they aren't 60fps arcade games, and most PS3 games had controller lag when you played locally anyway, so they'll probably be fine.

No. You are comparing apples to oranges.

Or this.

What am I missing that makes cloud computations so reliant on low latency? Even more so than something like controller input?

You've been told over and over, it's nobody else's fault that you aren't getting it.

 

[TacticalFox88]

Console wars make people say the silliest crap, I swear. Where does this animosity for companies that don't release games on your preferred platform come from? Seriously.

 

[vcc]

No I'm really not.

If the game is running on the cloud, everything has lag. If this lag is bearable even for things like controller input, then why can't it be bearable for cloud computations?

What am I missing that makes cloud computations so reliant on low latency? Even more so that something like controller input?

It's the difference between having a custom product assembled in China and shipped complete to you, or having a person use parts fabricated in China to fabricate a custom product for you.

There are going to be different challenges to either.

For PSN now you will have issues about unavoidable input lag and the need for decent download bandwidth to stream the video. It'll probably be used most for games that aren't too concerned with latency like many jRPG's.

For XB offloading the problems is most calculation heavy tasks are also latency sensitive like most physics, most dynamic lighting, or most graphics calcs.

Most tasks that are NOT latency sensitive and calculation heavy could be done before hand and put on disk (like the lighting in Forza). Doing it on the server is inefficient.

So you have a very small class of problems were offloading can help and in most cases reasonable approximations exist that are close to as good as doing it for real. So you'd be spending a lot of money on engineering for something only marginally better than approximating it and you open it up to a lot more failure conditions. It's not that practical.

PSN now isn't proof of the same concept. They're just sending pictures and taking input. A much simpler problem. How ever we haven't seen it out in the wild in people homes; where latency will more readily rear it's ugly head and where bandwidth average 3-5 mb/s. So far PSN now and XB1 proof of concept demo's are run under controlled conditions. It's likely to function a lot worse in practice.

 

[Principate]

PSNow is only streaming video (literally from a PS3 in a server rack it seems) - it's not doing any computation - with a tiny bit of bandwidth for control input. It's not calculating physics, sending them back and updating the GPU, or running complex AI. And the cloud is not just sending data back and forth, it's got to match up in the game with your local data. It's no good calculating awesome burning rubber physics if your car is already round the first ingame corner before it gets the calculation back from the cloud.

Of course it otherwise the game wouldn't be playing at all, it's doing all the computation physics etc at the multiple PS3's at the data centre, you wouldn't be interacting with the game otherwise.

The difference is the server doesn't have to sink you with your graphics in order to perform some small part but rather does the thing which whole sale. Which is why a developer I believe said if we reach a point with low enough latency and high enough bandiwidth to make use of cloud capabilities inside a game outside of AI you may as well stream the whole thing rather than in parts, the requirements are fairly similar.

edit: what the guy above said

 

[LoveCake]

Once again...


Are people not reading the OP or something? I mean, be as skeptical as you like about if this has any real uses.. but for the love of god, can people stop talking about graphics. The damn OP invalidated your point already... jesus...

I have mentioned the Ai & physics & also graphics, & i know this is slightly off topic, but the PS4 is outselling the X1 because it is cheaper & the graphics are better (the resolution at least) most people here on Gaf yourself included know there is more to the MS cloud than the graphics, but when you really drill into it, that is what the masses are interested in.

I got Sim City on day one & that was supposed to use the cloud "stuff" other than the graphics & the maps were tiny, the people you could follow throughout their day actually went to the first job they could get to & then returned to the first empty home at the end of the day.

Either MS are lying or they are not getting across what the X1 cloud is doing, in the same way Nintendo failed & are continuing to do explain what the WiiU is.

The cloud has three times the power of a single X1 so lets just say that a X1 + cloud = 2 PS4's, where are the games that show this ?

How does using the cloud effect the development of a game, what do the dev's & pub's think about handing codes over to MS to store on their cloud, what happens when MS wants to use that storage space up, who decides when the servers get turned off for a particular game, what happens then to the games that use the cloud ?

People want proof it is a bit like that GT video yesterday where Pach is on about FF plugins with the Unreal engine & if it will make browser based games better & he goes on about how he knows thnat when he uses a microwave it heats things up, he doesn't care how it works or know 'actually physics-wise" but it works & that the end result is all he cares about & this is exactly the same thing with the X1 cloud.

Maybe MS is correct but this is not correct now today, it maybe in a few years, but by then it could be too late for the X1, as the old adage goes, it's not the size that count's it's how you use it" in the history of gaming & consoles, it is not always the most powerful console that wins, it is the one with the most numbers.

I think that most people in this thread are reading from the same book but not necessarily the same page.

 

[Cthulhu_Steev]

Also, jem0208, if you're on the beta programme you can use Playstation Now right away, Gaikai worked, Onlive worked - even back when we had 2MB-4MB connections - but there is no evidence (apart from the Build demo, which I remain unconvinced is a real world application of the tech) from MS that the cloud can do what they are promising.

If it can do it, why aren't they letting every x360/xbone/Windows user download that Build demo and see it for themselves? I can guarantee if they did that, and it worked, word of mouth would sell this thing far better than a powerpoint presentation to a studio audience.