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[ElTorro]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...one-cloud-message-shifts-to-dedicated-servers

There was not one mention of "the cloud" during Microsoft's 90 minute presentation, either from Xbox boss Phil Spencer or the many developers that took to the stage to talk about their games.

Instead, we heard the term "dedicated servers" over and over again. This after Microsoft spent a great deal of time and effort insisting the power of the cloud would revolutionise gaming as we know it.

And that - finally - is how Microsoft is now referring to the cloud. Is it an official rebrand?

"You picked up on exactly that," Phil Harrison told me at E3 last week when I mentioned Microsoft failed to mention "the cloud" once during its press conference last week.

"Xbox Live is the service. Dedicated servers is the benefit. That is the reason why these games are going to be better, why the experience for multiplayer is going to be better.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirmed on Twitter that the video, below, featured early Crackdown work. It shows how the cloud can make the destruction of a building, for example, faster and smoother. The fancy Crackdown trailer shown off at E3 last week also featured a building being destroyed.

We've only seen a hint of what's possible so far beyond multiplayer gaming with Drivatars and Titanfall's grunt AI. The Crackdown prototype is a great example of what the cloud should excel at - offloading complex calculations away from the host console, where the additional 100ms or so latency to and from the datacentre won't unduly impact gameplay. The cloud doesn't address graphics bottlenecks, but here it demonstrates how much of a strain simulating destruction of a complex scene can have on the CPU - an area where both PS4 and Xbox One lag behind even mid-range PC processors.

"The question is really how much CPU time Microsoft is willing to dedicate to each game instance. I suspect that the Crackdown prototype uses an order of magnitude more CPU power than, say, the grunt AI in Titanfall. It'll be an interesting stress test of the Azure infrastructure to see if it can hold its own in a game likely to break the million-sales barrier in short order."

Video of the demo is available in the article.

I remain unconvinced in the crucial area. How are the economics of that infrastructure going to work? I wrote on that in an earlier thread:

No, and the technological reasons have been discussed a lot, but apart from them, it just doesn't make sense.

There is no reason to make a "hybrid" application for performance reasons, that is, a game that runs partially on local hardware and partially on remote infrastructure. You would have a distributed software system which is inherently more difficult to engineer and test. And you would combine expensive local hardware with expensive remote infrastructure. It doesn't make sense.

The only reasonable design for a cloud-based gaming infrastructure that scales its performance over time is to run games entirely in the cloud and stream their input/output to a generic thin client. This way, the game itself is not architecturally distributed and, hence, much easier to develop. Nevertheless, you would still benefit from the cloud's benefits like resource-efficiency and the outsourcing of upgrades and maintenance from customers to service providers.

There are, of course, features that you need a server infrastructure for, but these things are inherently in need of networking, for instance, synchronization of players in multiplayer games, social stuff, aggregation and analysis of data, etc. But nobody is "offloading" stuff that would otherwise run locally for performance reasons. Performance may benefit as a side-effect (e.g., a console does not have to run the server in multiplayer games) but the functionality itself would be inherently network-based.

This is true not just for technological reasons, but also for economic reasons: why would anyone pay for a cloud infrastructure to implement features that no player would care enough for to justify its price? Nobody would pay a monthly fee to run cloud-based servers that calculate pre-baked lighting. This is ridiculous. The developer would scale such features down such that they run on the local hardware. It's easier, and it's free.

And finally, I haven't heard of any convincing idea for performance-motivated offloading of subsystems to a server. I have just seen some developers merely philosophizing about what might be technically possible without taking into account the necessary development costs or the actual impact of this idea. Everything else has been done long ago in online games

Offload me to the Cloud if old.

 

[SuicidalSteve]

Noticed this right away as soon as they said their first "dedicated servers"

 

[Curufinwe]

Is that tag new? It's pretty great.

Dedicated servers are something worth touting, so I approve of this message change. We've come a long way from when the gaming media was happy to regurgitate the MW2 marketing message of who needs dedicated serves anyway?

 

[twobear]

Not surprising. 'Cloud' has become a toxic PR term, they're doing themselves more damage by using it than they are generating PR for the console. If/when they have something more substantial to show (Cloudgine?) they'll be ready to use the word again.

 

[Ray Wonder]

I just hope my building destruction doesn't lag while the rest of my game is unaffected. That would be weird. Although I'd rather have that than FPS drops.

 

[V_Ben]

They were mocked openly for it, so the shift is a sensible one. Good stuff.

 

[werks]

MS is acting like CPU weakness in consoles is an incredible oversight when it was done on purpose in order to beef up the GPU. Somehow Xeon processors over the network is the answer for videogaming compute...

It's all bullshit, MS's cloud network isn't setup to support videogames. Hell amazon is better positioned to support compute for video games since the actually have a GPU cloud.

 

[Guymelef]

They said "dedicated servers" in front of all media, two days after they came back to same cloud talking....

 

[Ethelwulf]

I remember (I don't remember where though, sorry) Cerny once said that cloud computing gives minimal enhancements to gaming. In the end, why would you want to use cloud computing when you can built a slightly more powerful machine. I mean, if cloud computing gives a 15-20% increase in particle physics processing, why won't you better build a console capable of increasing processing equally without requiring the cloud?

I think that this strategy was their original justification of forcing online connection on any game. Now that its over, they clearly changed the message to 'dedicated servers'. Only time will tell if there's a huge difference. I don't think so though. We should've seen something already. Is there anything outside powered by the cloud that truly makes "gaming better"?

 

[Pug]

The Xbox one media event was from the off a repositioning and rebranding of the console. To end with welcome to the new Xbox One was just the punch in the face to confirm this. Its hardly surprising then, that the term moved from cloud to dedicated.

 

[Alx]

They were mocked openly for it, so the shift is a sensible one. Good stuff.

Yeah I noticed their caution on the keywords they used during the conference too, and it's a bit sad that we have to come to that. People get upset when they say "cloud", they cheer when they say "servers", but in the end it's still the same features.
Oh well, as long as people are happy...

 

[CypherSignal]

There is no reason to make a "hybrid" application for performance reasons, that is, a game that runs partially on local hardware and partially on remote infrastructure. You would have a distributed software system which is inherently more difficult to engineer and test. And you would combine expensive local hardware with expensive remote infrastructure. It doesn't make sense.

If you have a already established, massive, already-existing, tested, and proven infrastructure for large-scale data delivery and compute and you're able to add more compute power for large-scale, latency-insensitive, tasks to the experience at a cost lower than it would be to add that power into every device you manufacture, and you expect a significant fraction of those people to be connected online, then yes, it actually does makes some sense. Surprise.

 

[ElTorro]

It's all bullshit, MS's cloud network isn't setup to support videogames. Hell amazon is better positioned to support compute for video games since the actually have a GPU cloud.

That's a valid argument, and I expect that most IaaS-providers will explore the feasibility of GPU-instances as well. Many scientific and financial application benefit from GPU compute. Apart from that, running entire systems on cloud infrastructures will probably be a growing use case, as witnessed by Playstation Now.

That is actually still my main issue: why not just run the entire game "in the cloud" from the start? You can make the game available on a broader range of devices, since these only have to act as streaming clients, and you don't impact the complexity of game engineering.

My guess is that these demos are not a generally feasible thing, but just show cases, and only for selected games. Otherwise, it's much more reasonable to go directly to a streaming model like Playstation Now.

If you have a already established, massive, already-existing, tested, and proven infrastructure for large-scale data delivery and compute and you're able to add more compute power for large-scale, latency-insensitive, tasks to the experience at a cost lower than it would be to add that power into every device you manufacture, and you expect a significant fraction of those people to be connected online, then yes, it actually does makes some sense. Surprise.

You missed my point: the sensible way would be to not use additional resources at all, but to design and engineer the game such that it runs on the local hardware (like game developers have done since ever). Because that costs nothing extra.

 

[QaaQer]

If you have a already established, massive, already-existing, tested, and proven infrastructure for large-scale data delivery and compute and you're able to add more compute power for large-scale, latency-insensitive, tasks to the experience at a cost lower than it would be to add that power into every device you manufacture, and you expect a significant fraction of those people to be connected online, then yes, it actually does makes some sense. Surprise.

Now, make an economic case for doing that, i.e. expensive local hardware + expensive remote hardware + game dev that needs to be able to run only on local hardware + game dev for offloaded tasks. That is a lot of unnecessary expenditure for 3rd parties.

 

[Dr Amazon MD]

I tried explaining to people that's basically all the cloud ever was, but all I ever heard was, "If it was just dedicated servers they would call it that" or "It's gonna be incredible processing power so the console will be a lot more powerful than it's competitor."

It's also nice to hear Microsoft talk to us like were not just ignorant consumers as well. Lot's of nice changes over there.

 

[Revolutionary]

They're still airing the Titanfall Cloud commercial, though.
I continue to wonder what those 'interactions that gamers never thought possible' were.

 

[onanie]

They're still airing the Titanfall Cloud commercial, though.
I continue to wonder what those 'interactions that gamers never thought possible' were.

"I never thought online gaming was possible!" 2014.

 

[mrklaw]

Yeah I noticed their caution on the keywords they used during the conference too, and it's a bit sad that we have to come to that. People get upset when they say "cloud", they cheer when they say "servers", but in the end it's still the same features.
Oh well, as long as people are happy...

while in the end they might be the same features - MS clearly was using 'cloud' last year to suggest much more. 'the infinite power of the cloud' for example clearly implies more than dedicated servers.

 

[CypherSignal]

You missed my point: the sensible way would be to not use additional resources at all, but to design and engineer the game such that it runs on the local hardware (like game developers have done since ever). Because that costs nothing extra.

Crackdown 3 is "promising" the large-scale city destruction for a reason.

Now, make an economic case for doing that, i.e. expensive local hardware + expensive remote hardware + game dev that needs to be able to run only on local hardware + game dev for offloaded tasks. That is a lot of unnecessary expenditure for 3rd parties.

Yes, it is a lot of unnecessary expenditure for 3rd parties. How many Microsoft-developed/exclusive titles were talking about the power of the cloud? And how many non-Microsoft titles were talking about it?

Mild edit:

That's a valid argument, and I expect that most IaaS-providers will explore the feasibility of GPU-instances as well. Many scientific and financial application benefit from GPU compute

You can actually rent Amazon EC2 instances that use GPU compute right now. Doesn't look like that's available for Azure, though.

 

[Mugatu]

I don't care what they call it - just stop making ridiculous claims about servers, remote computing, etc.

 

[jelly]

In reality console manufactures have a power, cost, heat, size ceiling.

They all want us to subscribe to some sort of service for consistent revenue past hardware and software sales so dedicated servers are the ticket.

More and more features will be pushed to dedicated servers in the future rather than providing better hardware day one. Not a future I really want to see but I'm open to seeing what they do.

 

[quickwhips]

Anyone who doesn't understand that the cloud is a new buzz word for dedicated servers is just trying to stir the pot.

 

[twobear]

The Xbox one media event was from the off a repositioning and rebranding of the console. To end with welcome to the new Xbox One was just the punch in the face to confirm this. Its hardly surprising then, that the term moved from cloud to dedicated.

Yeah I did think that this was one of the weirdly under-discussed aspects of E3, that the MS show seemed more to me like a relaunching than anything else. I hope they stick with it and it wasn't just all for show, though.

Anyone who doesn't understand that the cloud is a new buzz word for dedicated servers is just trying to stir the pot.

You might wanna let these guys know before they invest too much money, then.

 

[ElTorro]

while in the end they might be the same features - MS clearly was using 'cloud' last year to suggest much more. 'the infinite power of the cloud' for example clearly implies more than dedicated servers.

That was always my issue (although "power of the cloud" is a general general PR slogan for Azure at Microsoft, and not limited to Xbox). Cloud-based infrastructures are in actuality a great thing for everyone, but they tried to sell it to gamers by equating it with local gaming hardware, obviously in an attempt to position themselves in the console performance war. By doing that, they put the entire concept of Cloud Computing in a bad light and muddled its actual benefits (which are related to costs and flexibility, not to performance), and that annoyed me as someone who is working in that field.

Anyone who doesn't understand that the cloud is a new buzz word for dedicated servers is just trying to stir the pot.

See. In fact, cloud infrastructures do introduce something new, namely the ability to allocate and free resources in (virtually) arbitrary quantities, and the pay-per-use model associated with that. You don't have to rent tons of servers upfront, you can rent as many virtualized server resources as you currently need on that day or our, and you only pay for that. This massively decreases the economic risk for service developers (i.e. game developers).

 

[King_Moc]

It'll be an interesting stress test of the Azure infrastructure to see if it can hold its own in a game likely to break the million-sales barrier in short order.

They know they're talking about Crackdown, right? It'll be lucky to hit a million sales.

 

[TyrantII]

Didn't the Crackdown demo show not only the wonders of the 100ms cloud, but what it did the demo when the cloud wasn't available? IE 3 FPS as the demo rendering resources had to be shifted to the client?

Just speaking for that Demo, this is why its not feasible. Are they really going to dump you to single player every time your ISP has a hiccup? Not let you play disconnected? Allow you to buy a $60 coaster if you don't go online (more for other regions than the US I'd suppose).

What the alternative? Turning off physics?

As said, it's such a waste of time and resources (costs) that's it not even worth it.

 

[K' Dash]

Yeah I noticed their caution on the keywords they used during the conference too, and it's a bit sad that we have to come to that. People get upset when they say "cloud", they cheer when they say "servers", but in the end it's still the same features.
Oh well, as long as people are happy...

Saying "the cloud" will make your games look better is bullshit.

Sayung "the multiplayer for this game will feature dedicated servers" is fine.

They didn't say the dedicated servers wouldimprove graphics.

 

[PhoenixFyre]

Essentially "splitting" your hardware is an absolutely boneheaded move. At the rate technology is advancing and the power of computers is growing, we're going to get to a point where it isn't needed. And we're going to get to that point much faster than we will the point where world wide internet is sufficient to guarantee constant, stable and fast connection.

I have no doubt that one day all computing will be done over the internet, but that's more to do with manufacturing and shipping costs than anything else. Until then, you're better off just building a stronger console than relying on this hybrid method and swallowing the negative reaction when things go wrong and games become unplayable.

 

[seg7]

i saw that they didn't mention words that had very bad press last year, kinect, tv, sports, cloud (secret sauce)... very well studied

 

[140.85]

It's always been an attempt to leverage the xbox success to try to boost the Azure business. There's really not much more to it. It's a smart business move but the benefits were oversold to gamers. It's smart to bring that talk back to earth. (lol)

 

[Tunesmith]

Just speaking for that Demo, this is why its not feasible. Are they really going to dump you to single player every time your ISP has a hiccup? Not let you play disconnected? Allow you to buy a $60 coaster if you don't go online (more for other regions than the US I'd suppose).

What the alternative? Turning off physics?

As said, it's such a waste of time and resources (costs) that's it not even worth it.

The definition of a singleplayer offline game is going away. Crackdown will most likely be an online title.

 

[JaggedSac]

It is merely an extension of the calculations currently being done in dedicated servers(Battlefield, Crysis, etc). The only concern would be resources at that point. Why is MS willing to allocate enough resources for physics calculations for a single player? It makes sense for multiple players as that would be 1 calculation for everyone, and enough bandwidth to feed everyone the data.

To run the entire game in the cloud is much more resource intensive from an infrastructure standpoint. Both in terms of the bandwidth needed to send a rendered image to clients and the hardware needed to do the rendering. For an 8 player game on PlayStation Now, you need the equivalent of 8 PS4/XBones in the infrastructure plus whatever is needed to run the host server(if a multiplayer game). For a hybrid game such as Crackdown, you need whatever CPU resources needed to manage the city and this is all that is needed for 1 - X clients.

 

[Alx]

Saying "the cloud" will make your games look better is bullshit.

Sayung "the multiplayer for this game will feature dedicated servers" is fine.

They didn't say the dedicated servers wouldimprove graphics.

They hadn't said "the cloud" would improve graphics either... most of their communication/demos mentioned AI or more recently physics.

while in the end they might be the same features - MS clearly was using 'cloud' last year to suggest much more. 'the infinite power of the cloud' for example clearly implies more than dedicated servers.

Well "the infinite power of the cloud" is an almost valid point. It would be entirely valid if they had said "the unlimited power of the cloud", because that's what it is : anything that is running in the cloud doesn't depend on a fixed console hardware, and can evolve with time and resources. It does sound a bit hyperbolic, but there's some truth to it : they're using dedicated servers, and the number and performance of those servers can (and will) increase with time.

 

[ElTorro]

For an 8 player game on PlayStation Now, you need the equivalent of 8 PS4/XBones in the infrastructure plus whatever is needed to run the host server(if a multiplayer game). For a hybrid game such as Crackdown, you need whatever CPU resources needed to manage the city and this is all that is needed for 1 - X clients.

However, for a streamed game you (1) don't need to sell expensive local hardware, so your customers have more free money to pay for the streaming service, (2) you can reach a much broader audience by streaming the game to many different an cheap devices, and (3) the development of the game is not impacted. Every game can be streamed. Conversely, you have to engineer a game specifically if it moves parts of it implementation into a network, and that adds to the complexity of design and testing in a time were game developers are already complaining about costs.

 

[AlphaDump]

This is true not just for technological reasons, but also for economic reasons: why would anyone pay for a cloud infrastructure to implement features that no player would care enough for to justify its price? Nobody would pay a monthly fee to run cloud-based servers that calculate pre-baked lighting. This is ridiculous. The developer would scale such features down such that they run on the local hardware. It's easier, and it's free.

great post, but this comment in particular is the "nail" in said argument that i wasnt really thinking about.

it is hard to not see the cost/benefit of fixed, localized hardware, verse something a service provider would have to rent and partition on a remote server where cost has a direct correlation to performance.

 

[Kayant]

It a welcome change and one that better represents the situation now because nothing that hasn't been done a dedicated servers before as be shown so far expect the concept demo for Crackdown. The demo was half way then so am looking forward to seeing it being used in the actual game since it's sounding like it's heavily integrated into the game.

 

[The Albatross]

This E3 was definitely less confusing in regard to this message. Microsoft clearly made an initiative to not use buzz phrases about online services, instead, focusing on Xbox Live and real systems like dedicated server. That's a more gamer-friendly and industry-friendly term that is more accurate.

There is nothing more confusing than the phrase "the cloud" anyway.

This is true not just for technological reasons, but also for economic reasons: why would anyone pay for a cloud infrastructure to implement features that no player would care enough for to justify its price? Nobody would pay a monthly fee to run cloud-based servers that calculate pre-baked lighting. This is ridiculous. The developer would scale such features down such that they run on the local hardware. It's easier, and it's free.

Well, gamers would probably not explicitly be paying for a cloud infrastructure, but it would be a hidden cost with future benefit. For instance, if you bought anything on Amazon from 1996 - 2007, you didn't know that you were partially funding a project that would eventually build the largest corporate cloud network in the world... but you were. Did anybody who bought a random item on Amazon see any benefit from that when they bought some piece of junk in 2005? No, but, if you've used sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Imgur, Reddit, and hundreds of thousands of others over the last 8 years, you've reaped the benefits of a dirt cheap elastic hosting network that was only made possible because of fractional hidden costs in the 10 years prior to that.

 

[hooijdonk17]

So secret sauce is now secret spice?

 

[BigDug13]

The definition of a singleplayer offline game is going away. Crackdown will most likely be an online title.

Are you saying offline gaming is going away and every title will run off a dedicated server? I don't see that future this generation at all.

 

[InFamousRaiden]

I don't care what they call it - just stop making ridiculous claims about servers, remote computing, etc.

yep, remote computing and hearing claims like the cloud can increase the power of Xbox 1 by a factor of 3 was the dumbest thing I heard coming out of Major Nelson's mouth in my life.

Being in the networking field, what they are mentioning is complete bullshit and to increase the power of a hardware over network is colossus horse shit. Major of the world just transitioned over Ethernet and not even fiber.... wait I am not wasting time...

horse shit people....

 

[ElTorro]

Well, gamers would probably not explicitly be paying for a cloud infrastructure, but it would be a hidden cost with future benefit.

Sure, but in that case the resources are necessarily limited to a few showcase games since they don't amortize their costs.

 

[Lucifon]

This E3 was definitely less confusing in regard to this message. Microsoft clearly made an initiative to not use buzz phrases about online services, instead, focusing on Xbox Live and real systems like dedicated server. That's a more gamer-friendly and industry-friendly term that is more accurate.

There is nothing more confusing than the phrase "the cloud" anyway.

I agree, and to be honest I'm completely happy if 'the cloud' only ends up being dedicated servers. Throughout last gen games were crying out for them, what with host advantage rearing it's ugly head and other issues. Dedi's becoming standard for online titles is something I'd love to see.

 

[BruceLeeRoy]

So one thing I don't understand is with Crackdown 3 they are theoretically offloading some computation from the CPU and doing that through the servers but that requires a online connection right? That doesn't seem to be a problem with a game like Titanfall where its basically only online mp but won't Crackdown 3 have a sp only campaign or can we assume it will require a constant connection to function.

 

[LukasTaves]

It actually makes sense for them to promote on more palpable bullet points the game have like dedicated servers, super human like AI, massive physics simulations and destructibility than just a abstract term as the power of the cloud! TM


I don't think for a second they are back pedaling on their goal, just changing the message in a way people can relate and cheer when they hear.

 

[Synth]

Are they really going to dump you to single player every time your ISP has a hiccup?

I'm failing to see how this is a new problem...

 

[Man-is-Obsolete]

Don't most games have dedicated servers? It was ironic last gen when many Sony games had dedicated servers on a free service and Xbox had p2p for smcertain games with a paid service.

Now all of sudden MS is acting like dedicated servers is something only they offer.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

Does it matter that much?

Cloud, dedicated servers. Same same.

 

[Man-is-Obsolete]

So one thing I don't understand is with Crackdown 3 they are theoretically offloading some computation from the CPU and doing that through the servers but that requires a online connection right? That doesn't seem to be a problem with a game like Titanfall where its basically only online mp but won't Crackdown 3 have a sp only campaign or can we assume it will require a constant connection to function.

Well there were always some cynics that thought Cloud was a way a nice marketing gimmick to introduce online DRM as a benefit, similar to SIM City.

 

[ElTorro]

Well there were always some cynics that thought Cloud was a way a nice marketing gimmick to introduce online DRM as a benefit, similar to SIM City.

At the very least, that is certainly some nice side-effect.

 

[twobear]

So one thing I don't understand is with Crackdown 3 they are theoretically offloading some computation from the CPU and doing that through the servers but that requires a online connection right? That doesn't seem to be a problem with a game like Titanfall where its basically only online mp but won't Crackdown 3 have a sp only campaign or can we assume it will require a constant connection to function.

It seems difficult to say with no idea how Cloudgine is supposed to work, but if they're sending real-time information from the cloud then it would seem to need a constant connection.