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[Grinchy]

Yeah this was just another reason I appreciated MS's approach at E3. None of those bullshit keywords, very little unnecessary talking, just all games.

If they showed some more intriguing software and less CG trailers, they would have had the best E3 conference.

 

[K' Dash]

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

Oh come on, don't you remember how they were pushing that bullshit last year?

Microsoft’s Phil Harrison Explains that Xbox One’s Cloud Can Actually Improve Graphics

 

[Rembrandt]

It'll be fun to see the reactions when we get a live crackdown demo. This gen is going to be hilarious.

 

[wapplew]

MS clearly hired new PR team for their massaging.
Words to avoid "Kinect" "Cloud" "TV" "Sport"
Words to use " Game" "Games" "Gamess" "Gamez"

 

[methane47]

It's already been explained (by me and others) in other cloud threads.

And basically what you have said in those things boils down to Cost Savings for The Developer. Functionality wise there is no difference between a physical server and a Cloud And in practice Cloud services are used Very often as just a place for a server instance.

So what exactly is the Point of using "CLOUD" as some marketing bullet point when "the Cloud" is not exclusive to Microsoft OR the XboxOne?

 

[TK Turk]

It'll be fun to see the reactions when we get a live crackdown demo. This gen is going to be hilarious.

You'll see a bunch of, "Nope, not good enough. I won't believe it until I see it working in my living room." And this will come from somebody that doesn't even own an Xbox One.

 

[TK Turk]

And basically what you have said in those things boils down to Cost Savings for The Developer. Functionality wise there is no difference between a physical server and a Cloud And in practice Cloud services are used Very often as just a place for a server instance.

So what exactly is the Point of using "CLOUD" as some marketing bullet point when "the Cloud" is not exclusive to Microsoft OR the XboxOne?

Because a term is not exclusive means it can't be used? I'm confused. Dedicated servers aren't exclusive to MS or Xbox One either, so why can they use those???

 

[Guevara]

Example of good journalism. So the "cloud" got downgraded all the way to just dedicated servers.

 

[methane47]

Because a term is not exclusive means it can't be used? I'm confused. Dedicated servers aren't exclusive to MS or Xbox One either, so why can they use those???

Its no longer some Marketing Bullshit they are trying to feed us.
Saying HEY Every Single dev will have access to dedicated servers because of the Cost savings special offered by Azure. This is something we can appreciate and understand.

But Saying "THE CLOUD will make your XboxOne 300% MORE powerful"
"The CLOUD will Make the Artificial Intelligence Soooo awesome"
"The Cloud gives access to DRIVATARS which are the best AI Everrr"

I Mean look at this Nonsense Quote:

"We're provisioning for developers for every physical Xbox One we build, we're provisioning the CPU and storage equivalent of three Xbox Ones on the cloud," he said. "We're doing that flat out so that any game developer can assume that there's roughly three times the resources immediately available to their game, so they can build bigger, persistent levels that are more inclusive for players. They can do that out of the gate."

its condescending BS that we are all tired of. I'm especially tired of the People that still haven't been updated on what the Cloud truly is and still try to feed me this nonsense on Facebook.

 

[LiquidNarwhal]

It's already been explained (by me and others) in other cloud threads.

Enlighten us anyways. Please.

 

[justsomeguy]

And basically what you have said in those things boils down to Cost Savings for The Developer

Not quite - that's one of the reasons why Azure (i.e. Microsoft's cloud) is good for xbox devs, but there are other cloud providers, not just Microsoft.

Functionality wise there is no difference between a physical server and a Cloud And in practice Cloud services are used Very often as just a place for a server instance.

Right - fundamentally using the cloud gets you a server (or series of servers, whatever) which is why I get so surprised that people just say "LOL CLOUD WILL NEVER WORK" because, ya know, the idea of dedi servers has kind of been proven over the years.

But no, one of the differences with the cloud model is around the elasticity of scale... servers become a commodity item that you can just run a couple of lines of code and there's another server up for you - just use them, they're there. No need to worry about building a server farm, maintaining it, ensuring you have capacity, ensuring you have sufficient geo-spread, etc. All of that stuff just goes away.

Of course there's a bunch of services built on top of the cloud architecture - in Microsoft's case, you get Blob storage, queues, buses, databases, so many features that are just there and work as part of the plumbing, again just making it trivial to consume. Other providers also offer that stuff, of course, I'm not saying MS is the only player in the market

So fundamentally the cloud model (Azure, Amazon, whoever) just makes it just way easier for a developer (game dev, enterprise dev, whoever) to just build a system that inherently scales and has a very quick time from writing code to having it running at that scale.

You can boil that down to "they could build all that stuff themselves, it's just cost reduction" if you insist, but I think that's way over-simplifying it... An indie dev would have no chance of deploying a global server infrastructure to support their game. Renting servers involves a big expenditure up front for unknown demand. However it's trivial for them to write an Azure-based game server that scales as their game grows.

So what exactly is the Point of using "CLOUD" as some marketing bullet point when "the Cloud" is not exclusive to Microsoft OR the XboxOne?

Cloud's not exclusive to Xbox One.
Free server are exclusive to Xbox One.
The maturity and widespread deployment of Azure is a key value-add for Microsoft.
The support in terms of SDKs and so on is a key value-add for Microsoft.

So, no, MS aren't the only supplier in the market but they're one of the better ones.

 

[Tookay]

nevermind.

 

[justsomeguy]

I Mean look at this Nonsense Quote:


its condescending BS that we are all tired of. I'm especially tired of the People that still haven't been updated on what the Cloud truly is and still try to feed me this nonsense on Facebook.

Actually IMO that was one of the less condescending ones... "Infinite power of the cloud" is marketing-speak... Telling software developers that they can call on X Gigs of RAM and Y CPU for every single one of their customers is a specific measurable factual thing and is actually quite useful!

 

[Man-is-Obsolete]

You wish.
I wish.

There are times when P2P works. Naughty Dog for example uses P2P and I hardly had any issues with Last of Us, and a group of us played it for many months.

So P2P is not always terrible. But many games use dedicated servers, at least the big ones. Battlefield does, the last Call of Duty did, Ubisoft games do, Destiny will. It is not something exclusive to MS.

 

[MoGamesXNA]

.

 

[justsomeguy]

remain unconvinced in the crucial area. How are the economics of that infrastructure going to work?

It's an interesting one, isn't it?

You have to assume they're taking the long view... Be at the forefront of cloud gaming now, because in 5 or 10 years it'll be the standard everywhere, so make sure Azure is positioned as the go-to cloud gaming service (regardless of platform).

 

[rokkerkory]

Both are synonymous aren't they? But one has more tangible / sensible meaning for the masses ie dedicated servers.

 

[methane47]

Actually IMO that was one of the less condescending ones... "Infinite power of the cloud" is marketing-speak... Telling software developers that they can call on X Gigs of RAM and Y CPU for every single one of their customers is a specific measurable factual thing and is actually quite useful!

Its Marketing BS because Xgigs of RAM local =/= Xgigs of Ram in the Cloud
and Ygigs of CPU =/= Ygigs of CPU in the cloud.

Especially when you are saying this to the layman.

Throwing out that comment is akin to saying "hey i see you have a bike! I'm going to give you TWO Bikes and now you can move twice as fast!!!"

 

[Schrade]

Yet "Retina" has been accepted and continues to live on.

Apple wins again! Take that "it's just a high resolution screen, gosh!" tech nerds!

Spoiler

lol

Yeah, well it has only taken off and been accepted by those who use/love Apple.

I would never allow myself to use such a stupid term when describing a screen's resolution.

 

[justsomeguy]

Its Marketing BS because Xgigs of RAM local =/= Xgigs of Ram in the Cloud
and Ygigs of CPU =/= Ygigs of CPU in the cloud.

Especially when you are saying this to the layman.

Throwing out that comment is akin to saying "hey i see you have a bike! I'm going to give you TWO Bikes and now you can move twice as fast!!!"

Hm, I can't see anywhere in that quote where he mentions it improving performance of the Xbox locally, it is very explicit that you get these things in the cloud - it doesn't then say "which is just the same as having it locally trololol PR bandit" ;-)

It's very specific about cpu and storage (not RAM - my bad)...and specifically talks about persistent worlds... which seems to relate directly to storage and dedi server power to me, no?

I'm not defending the infinite power of the cloud stuff, I just think that you're so annoyed by some of the marketing PR stuff that it's clouding (no pun intended) your view of some of the 'fair enough' stuff.

 

[StealthGoblin]

So what exactly haven't they changed about their original messaging? Seems radically different.

 

[dr_rus]

The whole point of cloud compute is that it has virtual servers and is scalable on the fly. Dedicated servers are the opposite of cloud. They should go and learn something before speaking really.

 

[Nags]

I still believe.

#headintheclouds

 

[Neuromancer]

I'm kind of bummed out by this development. This will make them a lot harder to make fun of in the future.

 

[Synth]

Throwing out that comment is akin to saying "hey i see you have a bike! I'm going to give you TWO Bikes and now you can move twice as fast!!!"

And if you have more than one person trying to get from A to B, you've probably made the process more than twice as fast.

As for the 3x processing power thing... that's also not actually quite as ridiculous as it initially sounds either.

If you create a peer to peer game, then generally one player's console is designated to be the host, and is responsible for what would be considered the 'canon' events happening in the game. This tends to mean that even if you're playing with 8 players, you're essentially restricted to the processing abilities of one console. It's not too difficult to offer 3x the processing ability using the cloud, when compared with the local solution described. That does still leave their claim being somewhat misleading (the way it is stated would lead someone to assume that if there are 8 players, you'd now have 24x the processing power in the cloud), but this again is a situation where the original claims should obviously be ignored, without writing off the entire idea of there actually being realistic benefits.

 

[Aizu_Itsuko]

The problem was never the name, it was how they were using the cloud to mislead consumers. As long as they don't do that, talking about the advantages dedicated servers or cloud computing can offer is perfectly fine.

 

[Biker19]

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.

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

Indeed, it's hilarious. Microsoft just needs to stop it with the bullshit before it makes them look even worse.

 

[Synth]

Indeed, it's hilarious. Microsoft just needs to stop it with the bullshit before it makes them look even worse.

Assuming the building demo is indeed a prototype for the next Crackdown, do you think referring to it as 'dedicated servers' rather than 'cloud processing' is a better description?

 

[Dr. Kitty Muffins]

So in your opinion, how do they answer these type of questions? Microsoft isn't really going out of there way to talk about this, they are simply answering questions. I can only imagine the outrage here if their answer was, "No comment."

Answer: We'll show you when we are ready to demonstrate the advantages of the cloud soon. We are working on some games that utlize the cloud and they currently aren't ready to be shown yet, unfortunately. Please bear with us.

Then let gamers debate how soon "soon" means and pull a Sony with it, dragging it out. Lots of companies do this and it is usually forgotten about after a period only to be remembered again suddenly if something is actually shown. It is battle tested cop out that often works - unless you have made too big a deal out of it before hand, then it backfires. And in the case of MS they may already have done that.

 

[JaggedSac]

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.

Are you saying you want to get rid of most local hardware? That seems like a far more radical vision than what MS had for the XBone. Always online, with absolutely no offline play. Large bandwidth needs. Infrastructure needs are FAR greater. Not sure what your argument really is. When a game is developed, they are not specifically targeting Playstation Now. They are targeting local hardware capabilities. So the limit is still on local hardware, thus Crackdown 3's destructibility would still have to be moved to something more capable and centralized(if multi-player is involved). Only way around this, is to forgo targeting a console spec and instead make the game available only on a streaming service, in which case, the resource needs for something like what Crackdown is doing, would be even greater.

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 will probably be like Destiny.

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.

Of course GPU resources will become more common in the cloud. Once the need for that type of resource becomes greater, MS will add the capabilities. There are currently not many enterprise related needs for GPU resources. They do have some remote GPU resources for scientific purposes currently.

As for complexity, sure, it does increase when doing things in this manner. But that is why there are middleware and engines. Which is how things have always been.

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.

All we have seen thus far is an extension of what dedicated servers have been doing for quite a while now. AI and physics calculations. This is just on a much larger scale and probably also includes single players. The infrastructure needs for this is far less than that of rendering the entire game remotely and blasting a compressed image over the wire. And doesn't cost money per game, or require a separate sub from the usual one.

 

[InfiniteUnrest]

[...]And doesn't cost money per game, or require a separate sub from the usual one.

There is a cost. It's just that Microsoft is currently subsidizing their Azure resources for gaming, unless something has changed. This likely will not always be the case, at least not if it succeeds like they want it to.

 

[Afrikan]

can't wait till every game has dedicated servers.

edit- busted...fuuuuuuu

 

[OldKingDoran]

Example of good journalism. So the "cloud" got downgraded all the way to just dedicated servers.

To be fair dedicated servers is a pretty big deal

P2P online gaming sucks so bad.

 

[xxracerxx]

Univision staff sure is showing their support for USA, wearing kits.

never mind that Panama thing.

Whoops.

 

[Melchiah]

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.

But, it was supposed to make the XB1 40 times more powerful than the 360.

http://www.totalxbox.com/54748/xbox...e-equivalent-of-three-xbox-ones-in-the-cloud/

"It's also been stated that the Xbox One is ten times more powerful than the Xbox 360, so we're effectively 40 times greater than the Xbox 360 in terms of processing capabilities [using the cloud]. If you look to the cloud as something that is no doubt going to evolve and grow over time, it really spells out that there's no limit to where the processing power of Xbox One can go."

 

[methane47]

Hm, I can't see anywhere in that quote where he mentions it improving performance of the Xbox locally, it is very explicit that you get these things in the cloud - it doesn't then say "which is just the same as having it locally trololol PR bandit" ;-)

It's very specific about cpu and storage (not RAM - my bad)...and specifically talks about persistent worlds... which seems to relate directly to storage and dedi server power to me, no?

I'm not defending the infinite power of the cloud stuff, I just think that you're so annoyed by some of the marketing PR stuff that it's clouding (no pun intended) your view of some of the 'fair enough' stuff.

Hm, I can't see anywhere in that quote where he mentions it improving performance of the Xbox locally, it is very explicit that you get these things in the cloud - it doesn't then say "which is just the same as having it locally trololol PR bandit" ;-)

It's very specific about cpu and storage (not RAM - my bad)...and specifically talks about persistent worlds... which seems to relate directly to storage and dedi server power to me, no?

I'm not defending the infinite power of the cloud stuff, I just think that you're so annoyed by some of the marketing PR stuff that it's clouding (no pun intended) your view of some of the 'fair enough' stuff.

You see.. but None of this has to do with the actual power of the console. Thats like saying hey we got more powerful Dedicated servers.
But no... they have skillfully crafted their PR into misleading millions of people. Instead of talking about a more robust network, or more responsive Online play... they talk about a 3-4 times more powerful "XboxOne". Its misleading.

That would be buying a PC and judging how powerful the PC is by the speed of the internet connection. It makes no sense.

Here is another quote from the same link.

"It's also been stated that the Xbox One is ten times more powerful than the Xbox 360, so we're effectively 40 times greater than the Xbox 360 in terms of processing capabilities [using the cloud]. If you look to the cloud as something that is no doubt going to evolve and grow over time, it really spells out that there's no limit to where the processing power of Xbox One can go.

They talk specifically about the Xbox One being 40 times more powerful because of the cloud... while in truth... The Cloud is independent of the platform. If the cloud makes the XBO 3 times more powerful then it should also make the XB360 also 3 times more powerful and also the Nintendo DS 3 times more powerful.

Its totally disingenuous.

 

[igRossMcIntosh]

I am curious - what is the perceived difference between the cloud and dedicated servers?

 

[klodeckel]

I am curious - what is the perceived difference between the cloud and dedicated servers?

Well, in this case, the "cloud" is just an undefined hypernym for servers that provide calculation power, scalabilty, dedicated spaces for online gaming, storage and more.

It's easier to just use "cloud" as an term than everything Iisted.

 

[Synth]

They talk specifically about the Xbox One being 40 times more powerful because of the cloud... while in truth... The Cloud is independent of the platform. If the cloud makes the XBO 3 times more powerful then it should also make the XB360 also 3 times more powerful and also the Nintendo DS 3 times more powerful.

Its totally disingenuous.

Again, this depends on how you view the claim. Titanfall would not have worked as a p2p game. This isn't exactly a 3x power thing, but if you think a single local Xbox 360 was going to run the entire game along with all the AI unit and Titans, then I don't think you've played many online games. So yes, it would apply to the Xbox 360 too. And the Nintendo DS if Nintendo so chose.

There are plenty of games running on machines that are 3x the processing power of the machine playing them (MMOs being probably the most obvious example). Hell, PS Now is essentially the ultimate example of this as it would have no troubles offering PS4 processing to a Vita (I'm going to guess this is a little bit more than 3x here). This is obviously different because the Vita will simply stream the whole game, but if they wanted to do something tech-demoish, or someone far more creative than me actually came up with a decent idea, nothing would stop that same PS4 simply crunching numbers for the Vita to then use in a game that is otherwise mostly local.

This line of thinking only becomes a serious issue when you take a direct view of any increase, and decide that the Vita should now actually be a PS4 as long as it maintains a connection to the internet. I actually don't think I've seen a statement in even the more BS MS claims that actually states this though.

Well, in this case, the "cloud" is just an undefined hyperym for servers that provide calculation power, scalabilty, dedicated spaces for online gaming, storage and more.

It's easier to just use "cloud" as an term than everything Iisted.

You didn't make that sound very undefined.

 

[rokkerkory]

I guess they are using it interchangeably now. Mass market just doesn't understand 'cloud', it's marketing speak since day one when it popped up. "to the clouds!" - what does that even mean? So MS has to find a better way to translate that for average joe.

Even working within IT, it's mumbo jumbo PR talk. The opportunities are there to leverage but how in a way that can affect the user experience is key. This is yet to be defined.

they are still using it however, E3 Engadget interview with spencer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sameAKsFcQ0 (around 5min mark)

 

[Lord_Balkan]

The one thing you guys are missing is... the cloud is a dedicated server. Cloud computing? Server side calculations. Cloud storage? Server side storage.

 

[Synth]

EDIT: That wasn't very well worded.

EDIT2: Well, since the thread appears to have slowed down, I'll try again.

The one thing you guys are missing is... the cloud is a dedicated server. Cloud computing? Server side calculations. Cloud storage? Server side storage.

Dedicated servers are generally dedicated either to a user or a task. This isn't like cloud instances where the same machine can be hosting a Forza race one moment, or calculating AI for a Chess game the next. Can be mine now, and yours in 15 seconds. You could call them dedicated servers in the sense that they're dedicated to... well... serving, but there's enough of a distinction that I feel it's rather unhelpful to do so.