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[John Wick]

Sony use AWS, which is the exact same tech. Its just the advantage on being in-house and the cost benefits that provides them to simply allow a greater amount of servers. Their early investment into XBL with the subscription has allowed them to get to this size over the course of many years. Whereas, unfortunately Sony don't have the same advantage, and every investment into online last gen will of been paid off from alternative revenue streams since they didn't have a subscription model since later in the gen.

There'd be no difference in the choice between AWS and Azure for Sony.

It's got nothing to do with Xbox Live subscriptions. Cloud computing is a platform MS have invested huge amounts of money in because they want to be a global player in the cloud computing business. It makes them billions every year. Far more than Xbox. You do know Nadella was the head of it?

 

[justsomeguy]

But Azure is dedi servers also right?

There's an awful lot in Azure. Dedi servers is the "obvious" thing to a gaming consumer. As a developer there's a whole bunch of rich technology on the back end to ease massive scale gaming - such as hyper scale databases, event processing and even machine learning to datamine those events and spot/predict trends and behaviours or visualisations of that using tech like powerbi.

 

[justsomeguy]

It's got nothing to do with Xbox Live subscriptions. Cloud computing is a platform MS have invested huge amounts of money in because they want to be a global player in the cloud computing business. It makes them billions every year. Far more than Xbox. You do know Nadella was the head of it?

Youre agreeing with leeeh I think. He was saying there's limited difference between aws and azure for sony, but for ms azure is "in house" which provides some advantages to ms in their use of cloud tech.

Edit: One advantage is that ms can presumably dedicate/specialise parts of azure for gaming more easily than sony could with aws.

 

[leeh]

It's got nothing to do with Xbox Live subscriptions. Cloud computing is a platform MS have invested huge amounts of money in because they want to be a global player in the cloud computing business. It makes them billions every year. Far more than Xbox. You do know Nadella was the head of it?

It totally is. Even though XBL uses Azure tech, the platforms are seperate entities which are just located in the same space. I'm sure theyll be accounted for under different budgets.

The development of the Xbox capacity will of been driven from the revenue from XBL rather than from Azure.

 

[mocolostrocolos]

Of course it is, it's a freaking business.

 

[Steroyd]

How is this new to you OP???
MS is a business, it's cloud services are a business. What did you think they put a special clause preventing Sony from using its cloud platform?

Given that at one point it was a selling point of the Xbox One to making it 100x more powerful or whatever spiel they were talking about during that fateful E3 2013, there was reason to believe that MS would hold onto it as a bullet point the Xbox One can do that the PS4 can't.

 

[RibMan]

So how exactly is access to Azure (aka "the infinite power of the cloud") a selling point for their Xbox hardware?

The Xbox One is an underpowered console that was going to be always-online. In order to justify the always-online requirement and convince people the console is powerful, Microsoft (cleverly) came up with 'the power of the cloud' message. They successfully convinced people that the Xbox One having an internet connection means the console will be super powerful. That's a big selling point.

 

[SomedayTheFire]

Well that's pretty obvious isn't it?

 

[lord pie]

Does this mean that the PS4 has always had the same potential benefits as the Xbox One from the power of the cloud(tm)?

Correct. Think of the 'cloud' as simply being server rental.

You pay for what you use, as you need it. Demand goes up? You pay more and instantly get more servers. Demand goes down, you get less, pay less. Whereas the old model required buying and maintain the servers yourself - even if they weren't being fully utilized.

Cost wise, there are benefits in the short term - but it's more about scalability. Get big enough and you probably will want your own servers.

It should make things immediately obvious why 'the power of the cloud' was always complete bullshit for single player games: The developer pays for every hour played. Without a mechanism to pass on those costs to the players, it won't happen.

So when they show that video of a single crackdown game having 7 high end servers running at peak capacity.... Well... Consider Amazon's high end 32 core servers cost ~ $7 per hour.

 

[Maximilian Kolbe]

Well who don't want Azure?
https://twitter.com/Claudia_Azure

 

[Bits N Pieces]

Can't wait till MS show off more Crackdown 3, I wonder how much of an impact it will actually have on game development in the short to long term.

 

[$h@d0w]

Aliyun and AWS are way better than Azure, dunno why you would want to use it.

 

[Ol No Bones]

I wish Sony would do it. XBL games on azure are so smooth.

 

[darkinstinct]

Please lock the thread if this is common knowledge, but this is new to me.

It is known. They've been saying it ever since two years.

 

[Ol No Bones]

Correct. Think of the 'cloud' as simply being server rental.

You pay for what you use, as you need it. Demand goes up? You pay more and instantly get more servers. Demand goes down, you get less, pay less. Whereas the old model required buying and maintain the servers yourself - even if they weren't being fully utilized.

Cost wise, there are benefits in the short term - but it's more about scalability. Get big enough and you probably will want your own servers.

It should make things immediately obvious why 'the power of the cloud' was always complete bullshit for single player games: The developer pays for every hour played. Without a mechanism to pass on those costs to the players, it won't happen.

So when they show that video of a single crackdown game having 7 high end servers running at peak capacity.... Well... Consider Amazon's high end 32 core servers cost ~ $7 per hour.

It may only need to spin up a server for a few seconds during some action. Is crackdown not gonna release because of costs? You can speculate about the cost to MS but it's pure speculation nothing more. When I'm running around blowing up skyscrapers in crackdown next year are you gonna talk about how unfeasable it is?

 

[kpaadet]

A company would like another company to use their service so they can make more money, I am shocked.

 

[spwolf]

The Xbox One is an underpowered console that was going to be always-online. In order to justify the always-online requirement and convince people the console is powerful, Microsoft (cleverly) came up with 'the power of the cloud' message. They successfully convinced people that the Xbox One having an internet connection means the console will be super powerful. That's a big selling point.

lol... did they really?

 

[kyser73]

If MS uses Azure to prerender/assist physics in crackdown they need some kind of special Azure service and api and a matching physics engine. They are not saying they are sharing that and Sony probably can't compete with the verticality of being a gaming platform owner, software developer and server farm owner.
So "power of the cloud" (if existent) could still be an MS exclusive.

MS use software developed by a company called Cloudgine to do their cloud compute physics stuff. There's nothing on the Cloidgine website or in press to indicate MS own them or their software.

 

[Durante]

Of course it is, it's a freaking business.

Pretty much.

Anyone who thought MS would not rent cloud computing time to clients which use it to run servers for their PS4 games lives in that fantasy world in which companies act like message board fanboys.

 

[LiquidSolid]

So you say in the future it would be more common to see PS4 exclusives to get dedi servers also? Through AWS.

That has nothing to do with early investment or whatever leeh's going on about, it's a design/business decision. Sony used to use dedicated servers for most, if not all, of their games (Resistance and Warhawk being the big two) but Microsoft never bothered even while they were bringing in shitloads of money via XBL subs and barely anyone complaining about that, so I guess they just gave up on it.

The best way to change that is probably to get more people to care about dedicated servers but I'm doubtful that will happen.

 

[EvB]

Pretty much.

Anyone who thought MS would not rent cloud computing time to clients which use it to run servers for their PS4 games lives in that fantasy world in which companies act like message board fanboys.

But I heard Sony had to use a customer build of Ubuntu Linux to even browse the Internet in their internal studios?

They develop games on Mac and use lotus notes to send mail to each other

 

[Jonnax]

Thisis like how Samsung makes parts for Apple whilst also selling phones.

If Phil gave the Azure team a call and asked them not to sell to Sony they'd probably ask him who he was.

 

[leeh]

That has nothing to do with early investment or whatever leeh's going on about, it's a design/business decision. Sony used to use dedicated servers for most, if not all, of their games (Resistance and Warhawk being the big two) but Microsoft never bothered even while they were bringing in shitloads of money via XBL subs and barely anyone complaining about that, so I guess they just gave up on it.

The best way to change that is probably to get more people to care about dedicated servers but I'm doubtful that will happen.

They don't have enough capacity to run under extreme peak loads as past trends have kept telling us, what makes you think they've got enough budget to expand to provide servers for all 1st party games?

Microsoft have been in this, with a subscription model, for over ten years. Of course they've got a massive advantage with that, and the fact theyre one of the leading SaaS providers which generates billions in revenue alone.

Simple point is, the more revenue Sony get from PSN, the more they can invest back in to it. Yes, that may result in servers for 1st parties which they can subsidise.

 

[Lazaro]

Well who don't want Azure?
https://twitter.com/Claudia_Azure

There was a weird Windows 8 Japanese app where you could "touch her" for Azure related data.

 

[00ich]

MS use software developed by a company called Cloudgine to do their cloud compute physics stuff. There's nothing on the Cloidgine website or in press to indicate MS own them or their software.

Do you think Cloudgine will make it other platforms? For example the PS4 or PC?
Crackdown 3 is our first priority now, and we want to ensure that the experience on Xbox One is the best it can be. However, like I said, Cloudgine is a server-side technology so there is no restriction on clients connecting to our platform.

That was after MS bought Havok they got them too. Seems that they are still independent. Crackdown 3 will be interesting.

 

[yurinka]

It's understandable, they want more customers for their service. Why not?

 

[LiquidSolid]

They don't have enough capacity to run under extreme peak loads as past trends have kept telling us, what makes you think they've got enough budget to expand to provide servers for all 1st party games?

Microsoft have been in this, with a subscription model, for over ten years. Of course they've got a massive advantage with that, and the fact theyre one of the leading SaaS providers which generates billions in revenue alone.

Simple point is, the more revenue Sony get from PSN, the more they can invest back in to it. Yes, that may result in servers for 1st parties which they can subsidise.

Because that's not how it works. You don't just blow your budget on servers if most of them aren't even going to be used, you plan it out based on what you estimate the loads will be. They obviously try to plan out ahead for those extreme peak loads too but sometimes demand is far greater than they've estimated. Other times, asshole kids decide to DDOS the network.

Why you'd bring this up as if it's a Sony exclusive problem, I have no idea. Microsoft's had the exact same problem plenty of times in the past. Hell, they just had outages a couple of days ago, didn't they? I guess they haven't got enough budget either, right?

 

[aquavelva]

Azure is slated to be a huge revenue stream for Microsoft so this isn't shocking at all. AWS is still killing it though.

 

[ginger ninja]

It's easier done than said. They already use AWS.

Azure is 1000000000000 times more important to MS than entire Xbox business.


They already do.

Aren't they already their client?

ps: beaten ^

Excuse my misinformation. I genuinely thought they had their own setup given how terrible PSN performs at times.

 

[pastrami]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. It's baffling that fanboys think these huge multinational corporations are dictated by their gaming divisions.

 

[Conduit]

If anything they'd absolutely love to have PSN as an azure hosted service. Think of the money they'd make and the PR win.

Why Sony should move to Azure if they use Amazon Web Service?

 

[jiggles]

This is about as shocking as Sony being allowed to use PowerPoint.

I didn't think PSN was on AWS, though. I know Uncharted 3 used it because Amazon used that as a featured use case, but I certainly didn't think the rest was. They don't use S3 buckets for downloads, do they?

 

[rpg_fan]

I thought this was always the way it was. Azure and Xbox are entirely different parts of Microsoft with different management/budgets/priorities/etc.

 

[Doffen]

Sony should move it to Amazon cloud which is superior to the rest anyway. But I guess that easier said than done.

Not according to Nasuni.

 

[Squozen]

Youre agreeing with leeeh I think. He was saying there's limited difference between aws and azure for sony, but for ms azure is "in house" which provides some advantages to ms in their use of cloud tech.

Edit: One advantage is that ms can presumably dedicate/specialise parts of azure for gaming more easily than sony could with aws.

No, there's absolutely nothing about Azure as a platform that can't be easily replicated by AWS or another cloud platform. Seriously, this stuff is incredibly generic and used by almost everybody for everything these days.

 

[jiggles]

Actually, it seems Sony are using Rackspace's OpenStack now. They shifted a lot (if not all) of their PSN services off of AWS following the 2011 attack.

 

[Durante]

Not according to Nasuni.

... that's about storage.

 

[Flintty]

Azure is slated to be a huge revenue stream for Microsoft so this isn't shocking at all. AWS is still killing it though.

Its not shocking at all but I remember a Titanfall thread a while back where people thought the idea of Azure being used for any console gaming other than Xbox was impossible. Ha.

It's a business and money talks, as they say!

 

[protomouse]

Of course it is.

Thing is: regardless of what infrastructure provider you use, you need to bring your own systems architecture that is both smart and leverages the capabilities provided by the infrastructure (and that's just the technology aspect). Microsoft, being a company rooted in software and services, had a lot of experience operating large scale consumer systems prior to Xbox Live (such as MSN, Hotmail and Windows Update) - and I think that has shown.

 

[leeh]

Because that's not how it works. You don't just blow your budget on servers if most of them aren't even going to be used, you plan it out based on what you estimate the loads will be. They obviously try to plan out ahead for those extreme peak loads too but sometimes demand is far greater than they've estimated. Other times, asshole kids decide to DDOS the network.

Why you'd bring this up as if it's a Sony exclusive problem, I have no idea. Microsoft's had the exact same problem plenty of times in the past. Hell, they just had outages a couple of days ago, didn't they? I guess they haven't got enough budget either, right?

Budget isn't just for servers, its for disaster recovery, staff, oncall engineers and engineering resource to improve services which are being attacked/greatly utilised.

You can plan and load test based on current concurrent users and then calculate how high your ceiling is based on how many users it takes to cause it to fall over. There's always a finite capacity. The ceiling for XBL will probably be larger, but its still easy for the attacker just to send more traffic

With DDoS it isn't just the amount of servers you have, its the management of your routers at a network level, the optimisation of the API's which are being attacked and how quick you are to respond.

The simple fact is, with DDoS, is that it's a lot easier to make your attack larger than it is scale your network to handle it. Even if you had more servers, all the attacker has to do is change a couple of input fields to make the attack larger.

Although, as an engineer, you can see what's being attacked, and try and craft your services in such a way so that request is blocked but normal service can be resumed. Although, overall its just a cat and mouse game.

Using last Christmas as an example, XBL was down for a couple of hours whereas PSN was down for a couple of days. Since PSN is growing by the minute, and the PS4 is performing excellently, you can guarantee that Sony will be pumping a lot of money back into their infrastructure.

 

[BokehKing]

Common knowledge. Sony and Microsoft are businesses, not fanboys.

That is not common knowledge to people here though (but....it should be)


Btw, Xbox was down for more than just 'a couple hours' last year at Christmas

 

[Captain Tuttle]

Lol at people saying this was common knowledge, there are hundreds of posts on GAF worrying that MS would shut off Havoc when they bought it. Also does anyone remember the MS buying AMD rumor threads? Lots of scared posts.

Granted it was mostly fanboys type stuff

 

[JaggedSac]

That was after MS bought Havok they got them too. Seems that they are still independent. Crackdown 3 will be interesting.

Crackdown 3 is basically a big test/pitch for MS. If it works, the engine is easy to use, and the costs aren't too high, it could bring in additional cloud services revenue:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/10/...16-interview-crackdown-3-quantum-break-recore

Because Crackdown 3 doubles as a research and development opportunity, Microsoft is able and willing to toss in its support. When Jones’ team needs to better understand cloud infrastructure, Microsoft provides access to data centers. When the Cloudgine team has questions about cloud infrastructure, Microsoft’s experts give answers. If Crackdown 3 sets a precedent, Jones tells me, it could revolutionize the entire industry.

And both Xbox One and Microsoft, with years of experience already under its belt, would be positioned to benefit immediately. "Frankly," says Novak, "we are changing the way that [Microsoft cloud computing platform] Azure’s functionality works because of his game."

 

[Percy]

Played Titanfall on Xbone a fair bit when it came out and honestly couldn't tell what advantages these servers were giving me over (for example) CoD Ghosts, which I was also playing online a bit before Titanfall came out. CoD actually ran better if anything.

Seems like Azure has been more hype than substance so far imo.

 

[Silent Chief]

It's never a good idea to have a competitor as a supplier. It happens. Usually because of M&A (mergers and acquisitions), but you don't put your foot in that snare willingly.

In reality there is very little that can be done when a supplier is not providing a contracted service. Diversification is good, but always leads to higher costs.

The interesting thing with Amazon is that they initially over engineered their system to be able to deal with Black Friday, Boxing Day and the rush in between. When they realized that most of that computing power was sitting there unused the rest of the year, Amazon Cloud Services was born. In that light, it's not surprising that performance isn't great at this time of the year.

 

[Zaptruder]

A lot of hindsight bias going on in this thread.

I did not see a single instance of anyone mentioning that this was anything but an Xbox One exclusive feature in threads previously discussing Azure/cloud processing for console gaming.

I mean, it makes a lot of sense in hindsight... but you're been dishonest with yourself if you didn't think about this until now and are concluding that this is obvious.

 

[CadetMahoney]

No way a company will sell a service to ANYONE? Crazy.

roff

 

[Kodros]

Because MS have repeatedly claimed that access to Azure servers is an advantage unique to their Xbox hardware.

This was obviously a disingenuous claim, but they still made it.

I remember hearing back at launch that the XBone just has some library built in to help handle cloud processing easier and maybe more efficiently.

 

[krang]

A lot of hindsight bias going on in this thread.

I did not see a single instance of anyone mentioning that this was anything but an Xbox One exclusive feature in threads previously discussing Azure/cloud processing for console gaming.

I mean, it makes a lot of sense in hindsight... but you're been dishonest with yourself if you didn't think about this until now and are concluding that this is obvious.

This is not the first time Azure platform non-exclusivity has been discussed as viable. This thread, for example.

What you might be confusing it with is the notion that XB1 exclusives get it for nothing/minimal, whereas other platforms would have to pay for the privelage.

 

[WhiskerFrisker]

A lot of hindsight bias going on in this thread.

I did not see a single instance of anyone mentioning that this was anything but an Xbox One exclusive feature in threads previously discussing Azure/cloud processing for console gaming.

I mean, it makes a lot of sense in hindsight... but you're been dishonest with yourself if you didn't think about this until now and are concluding that this is obvious.

Right? I recall people acting like azure was only available to Xbox so that was a selling point for Xbox 2 years ago. If it was common knowledge there wouldn't have been hundreds of posts regarding this in the past.