Various Artists
Banned
Its likely they wanted to introduce the facts in a controlled environment their way and the Adam Orth Fiasco was bad publicity that they wern't prepared to control.
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Digital Foundry's evidence-based analysis on Xbox Cloud potential
- Thread starter Man
- Start date
Its likely they wanted to introduce the facts in a controlled environment their way and the Adam Orth Fiasco was bad publicity that they wern't prepared to control.
DragonSworne
Banned
I wonder how much weaker Wii U would be without miiverse giving it 40x more power in performance.
IHaveCandy
Banned
Does anybody have this graph without the clouds?
And with a network outage, suddenly you're playing Time Enough At Last: The Game.
With a network outage they turn against you Inception style. It's like in-game DRM increasing the difficulty by one million.
seems they couldn't release the information in a controlled way even WITH Adam Orth out of the picture lol
Just_myles
Member
Economy said:
This makes more sense to me.
Orth's comments absolutely should not be understood as confirmation of always online. I don't get what people have found difficult to swallow about this. Talking about something is not tacit confirmation. This as silly as saying someone discussing justifications of communism is ipso facto a communist. Anyone remember Phil Spencer's smiley 'tacit confirmation' of Xbone's upgraded specs on Twitter? Orth was fired for making a PR nightmare, not for disclosing features of Xbone.
(Yes, even in spite of the fact that they were features of Xbone.)
(Yes, even in spite of the fact that they were features of Xbone.)
OldAsUrSock
Banned
BruiserBear
Banned
It's sad hearing how many people from supposedly credible podcasts parroted Microsoft's claims about cloud computing.
On Weekend Confirmed for example, they openly acknowledged the PS4's better specs, but then said "well, the cloud computing might be able to make up that difference".
I only have a basic understanding of game tech and game engines, and I immediately smelled something funny in the air when I heard the Microsoft claims about "cloud computing" helping the graphical capabilities of their console.
On Weekend Confirmed for example, they openly acknowledged the PS4's better specs, but then said "well, the cloud computing might be able to make up that difference".
I only have a basic understanding of game tech and game engines, and I immediately smelled something funny in the air when I heard the Microsoft claims about "cloud computing" helping the graphical capabilities of their console.
Pristine_Condition
Member
Ding! We have a winner.
SenjutsuSage
Banned
The same digital foundry which said it was impossible for the PS4 to have 8GB of GDDR5 memory. They are smart fellas over there, but they aren't as smart as they think they are.
I'm sure this cloud computing stuff from Microsoft is quite likely to be a whole bunch of pr marketing speak. However, on the off chance that it isn't just marketing speak, there could be some rather interesting and very subtle applications for cloud assistance in games this generation, and I won't completely write off the possibility until we have advanced far enough in this gen and have actually seen and heard enough with regards to Xbox One's cloud computing potential or lack there of.
I'm sure this cloud computing stuff from Microsoft is quite likely to be a whole bunch of pr marketing speak. However, on the off chance that it isn't just marketing speak, there could be some rather interesting and very subtle applications for cloud assistance in games this generation, and I won't completely write off the possibility until we have advanced far enough in this gen and have actually seen and heard enough with regards to Xbox One's cloud computing potential or lack there of.
no no no ami' we have to wait for e3 for microsoft to tell us how technology works.
Palette Swap
Member
I'm trying really hard to think of an example where a platform holder has fucked up this badly the message delivery and I honestly can't think of any. I mean even Nintendo talking specs have never spread so much confusion themselves.
BruiserBear
Banned
Wouldn't it just be best to take a "don't tell us, prove it" stance on this cloud computing?
eh.. maybe sony and killzone being in game?
Not surprised, though it's nice to see exact numbers.
Everything internally (CPU, Ram, etc) is super god damn fast compared to anything like USB or Sata connections, nevermind THE INTERNET, I'd actually like to see what speeds memory caches on old CPUs were just for reference.
Still, I still imagine something depending on AI COULD be useful, as it'd basically be like multiplayer in regards to lag, but we'll see what people have in mind or if it's useful for even that much.
Everything internally (CPU, Ram, etc) is super god damn fast compared to anything like USB or Sata connections, nevermind THE INTERNET, I'd actually like to see what speeds memory caches on old CPUs were just for reference.
Still, I still imagine something depending on AI COULD be useful, as it'd basically be like multiplayer in regards to lag, but we'll see what people have in mind or if it's useful for even that much.
SenjutsuSage
Banned
What people keep missing about this whole obsession over how these two consoles stack up spec-wise, is that the Xbox One doesn't need to be any more powerful than it already is to have unbelievable next generation titles. It isn't impossible that the next Xbox could have a games lineup that is more appealing to a lot of gamers than what the PS4 may be offering, although I'm sure both will have a fantastic lineup of games, hence why I'm getting both.
Just don't for a second think that the PS4 has won the war simply because it has superior specs. Games that excite gamers matter more than specs, and always will. The PS4's work isn't done simply by having superior specs. Most people out there don't care about the specs. They care about content; and as much as Sony's PS4 event was more focused on gaming, they didn't show nearly enough on that front imo to blow Microsoft out of the water. They simply just had a more appropriately gamer focused event, and I give them tremendous credit for that.
However, at E3, the two consoles will be focused on games and gamers will decide what is more appealing to them based on the content shown. Let's not kid ourselves that things like rops, bandwidth, compute units and GDDR5 will matter when people are looking at games and making up their minds. A lot of people on this very site made that same exact mistake all those years ago with Cell, Blu Ray, XDR, HDMI, Full HD 1080p. What people are classifying as Microsoft's mistakes now mirroring almost precisely the mistakes Sony made prior to the PS3 release, keep in mind that Microsoft has not made a system anywhere nearly as complicated to develop for as was the case with Sony and the PS3. The Xbox One will be easier to develop for than even the Xbox 360, and such similar architectures between the PS4 and Xbox One is a boon to development, not a hindrance.
Just don't for a second think that the PS4 has won the war simply because it has superior specs. Games that excite gamers matter more than specs, and always will. The PS4's work isn't done simply by having superior specs. Most people out there don't care about the specs. They care about content; and as much as Sony's PS4 event was more focused on gaming, they didn't show nearly enough on that front imo to blow Microsoft out of the water. They simply just had a more appropriately gamer focused event, and I give them tremendous credit for that.
However, at E3, the two consoles will be focused on games and gamers will decide what is more appealing to them based on the content shown. Let's not kid ourselves that things like rops, bandwidth, compute units and GDDR5 will matter when people are looking at games and making up their minds. A lot of people on this very site made that same exact mistake all those years ago with Cell, Blu Ray, XDR, HDMI, Full HD 1080p. What people are classifying as Microsoft's mistakes now mirroring almost precisely the mistakes Sony made prior to the PS3 release, keep in mind that Microsoft has not made a system anywhere nearly as complicated to develop for as was the case with Sony and the PS3. The Xbox One will be easier to develop for than even the Xbox 360, and such similar architectures between the PS4 and Xbox One is a boon to development, not a hindrance.
Maxis and EA said that every Sim had a life that you could follow in SimCity. It was total bullshit.
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
Good article. The only reason MS ever brought up the cloud is because they simply couldn't say "our specs are worse than PS4" without having a gotcha to make it seem all better, even if their gotcha is a bunch of bull.
Spot on article and what most of us have been saying on GAF calling MS bullshit. This is some smoke and mirror shit that MS is using to hide its low specs. I rather go with the Gaikai model for future proofing PS4 where after 10 years, PS4 is just a streaming machine for a more powerful rendering farm in the cloud which can produce next-next gen graphics.
This just shows that game is very light on GPU and very single core performance dependent.
Great example of game that require ton of CPU power is Crysis 3. Its first game that utilize my i5 2500k in 100% on 4 cores, to that extend that Fraps'ing actually affect performance, even making .png shots choke game for few frames, where the same do not happen in Crysis 2 even in DX11 mode in very heavy scenes or in BF 3 heavy MP matches.
I like this suggestion, using the cloud for smear glass/second screen stuff makes sense. But again, wouldn't that be usable by Sony too? If publishers are going to invest in that kind of thing, they'd want it on both platforms wouldn't they?
Hari Seldon
Member
I don't see how the cloud could be useful for graphical improvements, however for AI it maybe extremely useful.
Say a single player game has some AI routine for the bosses. It ships with a basic standard AI routine, but in the cloud they collect user data and deploy a machine learning algorithm to adjust the AI routine based on user play. It is basically a way to auto-patch your boss encounters (or in the case of a strategy game, the entire AI for the game). You can already theoretically do this with just something like AWS.
Say a single player game has some AI routine for the bosses. It ships with a basic standard AI routine, but in the cloud they collect user data and deploy a machine learning algorithm to adjust the AI routine based on user play. It is basically a way to auto-patch your boss encounters (or in the case of a strategy game, the entire AI for the game). You can already theoretically do this with just something like AWS.
gwynplaine
Banned
none of that is inconsistent with a service like onlive or gaikai. nor inconsistent with the previously leaked xbox roadmap.
what if they meant that if you buy a game, you could also have an indefinite subscription to their game streaming service? i think that quote was just a roundabout way of saying they're offering a (laggy) streaming service and people are confused and imagining an integrated local processing/cloud processing vaporware feature.
Ploid 3.0
Member
D3 and Sims 2013 were successful in early units sold. I think Microsoft saw this and were very happy about their decision to do this. Both games heavily require data from the cloud servers.
Diablo 3 can't even load off-screen sections of the game without the cloud. If you desync and start scrolling through the map you'll find yourself on a square island and you can't walk off. Also enemies won't attack without D3's servers. there's like a key to activate their AI or something but when you lag they just sit there until you sync back up and find yourself dead, since you're dying on the server but not your client.
staticneuron
Member
I am pretty sure a company as large as MS has a social media policy in place. If he was fired it was most likely because he didn't follow the policy or clear what he said with a business conduct/ legal department first.
Again there is no magic sauce in MS cloud that is not buildable or already available in PS cloud.
In fact most of these clouds will probably be through servers owned and maintained by individual developers snd not by the platform holder.
The whole cloud processing thing is BS, every single instance it cites is duplicable across all platforms on the market today and tomorrow -- PS4, XBONE, Wii U, PC... Etc
As someone who's worked in an industry driven by cloud for the past 7 years (specifically F2P online games), im surprised by responses like yours.
The D3 and Sim City examples are bad because these are gameplay forms that existed before the cloud and performed BETTER without it. It was modified to keep exchanging handshakes and data with the cloud to continually verify that this was a real copy of the game. Of course there are legitimate reasons like the Diablo 3 cloud model being essentially what it took to play multiplayer with other persons online (continually exchanging data with server on where you are in the map and what action you are doing to what item, and cloud telling your client to render where your friends are and what they are doing).
Making them cloud based even for single player only hurt the experience with lag and one additonal req in online.
To summarise your attempt to justify cloud by claming cloud DRM in two recent big titles that forced constant verifications that the game was a real copy has no argumentative weight and proves nothing (you use an example that shows the very problems to try to prove a point to the problem at hand).
What are legit reasons for cloud?
- basic gameplay design being always multiplayer centric
- minimal client / minimized loading times, so data is being streamed to you as you play; see browser games
clutch.as.it.gets.
Member
Those comments from Eurogamer users are spot on
God Rays will be computed in the cloud! You know, God Rays come from between clouds. It now makes sense!
MS's cloud claims are ABSOLUTE nonsense. Even Digital Foundry fell for some of it by stating it could have a use for, wait for it, pre-baked lighting on the cloud! The fact that devs would not pre-calculate static data on their end and stuff it on a disc is utterly stupid, what a waste of electricity! Something that should be done once would have to be done gazillion times. Precomputed radiance transfer allows different lighting directions, intensity, and you can even bake sub surface scattering information. That's enough information to create visuals for any time of the day. Works only for static scenes, but realtime lighting using PRT is ridiculously fast.
Pre-baked lighting on cloud would only make sense for dynamically generated levels. It would be a very specific set of games that would employ dynamically generated levels. However, if I were a developer, I'd go for a real-time lighting solution if that was the case, asking people to download that info from the Internet is being douchey.
MS's cloud claims are ABSOLUTE nonsense. Even Digital Foundry fell for some of it by stating it could have a use for, wait for it, pre-baked lighting on the cloud! The fact that devs would not pre-calculate static data on their end and stuff it on a disc is utterly stupid, what a waste of electricity! Something that should be done once would have to be done gazillion times. Precomputed radiance transfer allows different lighting directions, intensity, and you can even bake sub surface scattering information. That's enough information to create visuals for any time of the day. Works only for static scenes, but realtime lighting using PRT is ridiculously fast.
Pre-baked lighting on cloud would only make sense for dynamically generated levels. It would be a very specific set of games that would employ dynamically generated levels. However, if I were a developer, I'd go for a real-time lighting solution if that was the case, asking people to download that info from the Internet is being douchey.
rohlfinator
Member
Basically the cloud can be useful in situations where:
-latency is unimportant
-data being transferred is small enough to upload/download quickly over any mediocre connection
-data is dynamic enough that it couldn't just be preloaded on the disc or as part of a patch
-processing/bandwidth are lightweight enough to avoid incurring heavy costs OR cloud features can be monetized to pay for their costs
There may be some interesting uses for it, but it's far more limited than Microsoft's "infinite power" marketing would imply. And so far MS has yet to present any realistic use cases for their cloud technology, probably so they can continue to drive the "40x Xbox 360" narrative.
I imagine we'll mostly see it being used for Dark Souls-style mechanics that bring multiplayer features into single player games. Nothing that couldn't be done by a traditional server model, but Azure might be more convenient for developers to set up, plus it has some other advantages like inherent scalability.
-latency is unimportant
-data being transferred is small enough to upload/download quickly over any mediocre connection
-data is dynamic enough that it couldn't just be preloaded on the disc or as part of a patch
-processing/bandwidth are lightweight enough to avoid incurring heavy costs OR cloud features can be monetized to pay for their costs
There may be some interesting uses for it, but it's far more limited than Microsoft's "infinite power" marketing would imply. And so far MS has yet to present any realistic use cases for their cloud technology, probably so they can continue to drive the "40x Xbox 360" narrative.
I imagine we'll mostly see it being used for Dark Souls-style mechanics that bring multiplayer features into single player games. Nothing that couldn't be done by a traditional server model, but Azure might be more convenient for developers to set up, plus it has some other advantages like inherent scalability.
tactilecleaner
Banned
Question, if you think the power of a console as 100% (CPU+GPU) how much power does different task takes in % (rendering, AI, lighting etc)? Example battlefield when you are in a big battle in daylight. Would be interesting to now when cloud function might help the Xbox 1 with some tasks.
JohnnySasaki86
Member
Which they point out, that only certain types of games would be affected by that. Open world type games with a lot of NPCs that run a lot of backround AI, like GTA and Skyrim. That genre is only a fraction of the games out there. Gears of War, Halo, Forza, ect do not require a lot of background AI characters(remember direct interactions wouldn't work due to latency and needing to be updated every frame).
Then they also point out that it would be hard for 3rd party games to financially support it if they are not doing the same thing on the other platforms.
So basically we'll only see it being used on that one, single, open world exclusive Xbox game, that MS may or not make. lol
In the short term, as in now and for the next few years, it would seem to be pointless. But I like the forward thinking behind it. 5-10 years from now when the tech improves regarding bandwidth/latency, and they come up with more creative ways to take advantage of it, I could see it making a big impact.
Christberg
Member
My take on the whole cloud thing is that it'll be used to make everything have forced multiplayer ala Sim City and Diablo 3. Because it'll se "so innovative!"
Some of us LIKE single player games, thanks.
Some of us LIKE single player games, thanks.
We will know something at E3 since Forza is a launch title and confirmed to be using it in some way.
I was thinking to possibly load tracks quicker? Does the cloud doing anything quicker than a local CPU make sense at all though?
Also I hate talking about "The Cloud". I feel stupid referring to it so ominously, and every time I hear a MS rep say "the infinite power of the cloud" I want to punch someone wearing a suit.
I was thinking to possibly load tracks quicker? Does the cloud doing anything quicker than a local CPU make sense at all though?
Also I hate talking about "The Cloud". I feel stupid referring to it so ominously, and every time I hear a MS rep say "the infinite power of the cloud" I want to punch someone wearing a suit.
well... cloud computing means ongoing costs... basically that means you cant have it in offline game that you pay once, even if it was great.
Now for MMO's and online games, or online service like Gaikai/Online where you pay monthly cost for accessing the service, yeah, of course.
What will happen with "cloud computing" in XO is that it will likely be used for setting up multiplayer servers... which will be very easy to do and scale, and one such server can support many many players.
la flama blanca
Banned
He can't stand this level of ether, let him do his mental gymnastics on easier stuff.
Angelus Errare
Banned
Doesn't seem like they were prepared either way.
rohlfinator
Member
Not really, most of the loading process (from what I understand) is just reading files from the disc or HDD and decompressing them. That's exactly the kind of situation where you need much faster bandwidth than the network can provide.
My guess is that Forza will use cloud rendering for prettier replays (basically an improved photo-mode) or for some kind of multiplayer functionality. Maybe they will use it for lighting, but I'm still skeptical about that.
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