1st Course
Member
How much would it cost for Microsoft to run an actual physical server through the course of the X1 life cycle? Does that 300k number even make sense from a financial point?
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Digital Foundry's evidence-based analysis on Xbox Cloud potential
- Thread starter Man
- Start date
Sony at E3: "It's always sunny in Playstation land."M°°nblade;59739609 said:
That'd be so hilarious, I almost want it to happen just to witness the unprecedented shitstorm.
maybe the servers/cloud added functionality is only available to those who pay for gold
silver members will have to play the gimped version
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Watch_Dogs wants to have a city full of simulated people. With the cloud, that might actually be possible. You could have AI threads for every single person.
Meus Renaissance
Member
Maybe that was Microsoft's original? To have an always-online console
CyclopsRock
Member
Do we know that it isn't?
Yeah, and then when the outrage came out about it when it leaked, they chose to make it not always online as that's not backpedalling due to never being revealed.
Certainly a feasible theory
Well I thought there had been at least one Azure crash in the last year (or maybe it was just a Office365 or Outlook.com crash) that didn't cause a Live crash.
EDIT: Well here's one report on an Azure outage. http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-azure-suffers-yet-another-extended-outage
So I guess only cloud saves are on Azure.
it would be interesting to get the viewpoints of developers at Bohemia and Bethesda
Wind's Howling
Member
Ouch.
Except when the internet gets awry and the AI goes bonkers and messes up the game world, and potentially even parts of the proposed gameplay scenarios as a result. That or the people without good internet play a more gimped version thus splitting up your user base? Then there's server load, what happens if there are too many people using the servers simultaneously and the load is too much for them to handle? See Sim City and Diablo.
Remember, AI in open world games has already been pretty good, and GTA5 will no doubt improve it further. I'm assuming that this next gen they will make all the improvements at a local level irrespective of anything else, and try to avoid development complexity and unreliability involved with the cloud.
BlockheadBrown
Member
I don't believe there is anything preventing Sony or Nintendo from doing the same.
For the record, this is hardly a theory anymore
crazy buttocks on a train confirmed this is EXACTLY what happened. Microsoft originally was going to go with an actually fully online, always on console... that would require an internet connection just to play even single player games. After early gamer backlash against the leaks, Microsoft decided to roll back the most severe requirement and go with a once-every-24-hours check.
Is there anyone out there even remotely tech savvy that believes the cloud is anything other than a fancy name for a server or group of servers?
Unfortunately, many "game journalists" out there aren't even remotely tech-savvy. Always remember: "complex server-side calculations."
Yeah, quality writing right there. Where do they even find these guys??M°°nblade;59739609 said:
If you don't work at
But then Ubisoft would have its own servers and could use this for all the consoles out there. Like an Watch Dogs Always Connected version. And even the ctos could be real time cloud based. And then we talk about a different game.
angular graphics
Banned
They need to hire Molyneux as their spokeperson XD
Too much BS. He left.
Yep, and you know who owns an industry leading cloud hosting facility that supports all the Same APIs they use for the X1 version and has all the capacity they'll ever need?
Metalmurphy
Member
Does this mean that Eurogamer writers are now on Sony's payroll or simply biased?
It's more that people here are annoyed because resources are being allocated to things that they'll likely rarely use.
I never understand these comments, from either side.
Can't they be both?
Industry leading? Aren't they behind both Amazon and Google?
iamshadowlark
Banned
They can also be neither.
Metalmurphy
Member
Hey, that's how I've, and others, been treated for saying the same thing. Just wondering if they're at least consistent.
Dr_Biscuit
Banned
Yeah, maybe if they cover for the additional development costs for a totally different game than the other versions. Otherwise the 300k sold on Xbone has no added value for Ubisoft.
Edit: not to mention the server related costs, I guess those will be covered from used games fee.
Amazon web services? Google? Rackspace?
Microsoft is not "industry leading" in cloud computing. At all.
Did we really need Digital Foundry to tell us this? They did put it nicely in the comparison of CPU response times to cloud CPU response times. Unless today's modern internet is capable of responding back within 2 nanoseconds, I don't see how cloud based CPUs can increase the throughput of XBONE's existing CPU. Can XBONE relegate some CPU tasks to the cloud, sure? I just don't see how they can depend on tasks specific to rendering, physics, and AI. Maybe stats computations or any CPU tasks away from the game OS.
I always feels that people who use that logic are often those who just avoiding the actual truth. I dont indulge those people, their mind is already made up.
NorthernAvengeR
Banned
I forgot how much fun these threads are
n't
They aren't industry leading in consoles either it didn't stop them saying otherwise in the X1 reveal.
A lot of AI routines don't need to be to the nanosecond. Physics and rendering does. I'm thinking if you have a open world game, and are using the cloud to handle AI, and persist the world, most of that world isn't being directly interacted with by the player, so it doesn't need to respond that quickly.
The Bookerman
Member
BLAST PROCESSING!
Rings any bells?
Rings any bells?
But what would really be the use in that?
When the AI is near the player character the AI routines would need to be running locally. The cloud processing AI not in your proximity seems pointless since you can neither see or interact with them.
Looking forward to hearing some developers thoughts on it, but surely the engineering effort to farm off tasks to the cloud would make programming for the Cell seem easy in comparison.
The offloading of AI is discussed in the article among a few other potential areas the cloud can be used. These sections of the article weren't quoted in the OP.
Man-is-Obsolete
Member
It's worse than that. What you said is just the trojan horse, the real cause is to make games always online.
And now egotistical, know it all Xbone fan-atics will regale us with tales of DF's lack of credibility to assess such a thing.
At the least, that nightmare was local.
At the least, that nightmare was local.
Speedy Blue Dude
Banned
How would the cloud work with my 1000 mbps connection?
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