Microsoft Project xCloud (Game Streaming), now offering Fortnite free without GPU membership

[iroboto]

Firstly, gaming isn't "mission critical". Nobody dies or suffers casualties when somebody can't game on the cloud. Secondly, you said your company oversubscribes server capacity. This is not my line of questioning, you said that in this post. But clearly work in a company that is very obviously focussing on profit first and service second (like all telecoms companies) which is not how I would expect Amazon, Google or Microsoft to operate their server platforms. They need to be profitable, but not by maximising profits at the expense of the service provided.

I am struggling to keep-up with the of your posts. You started with severs changing gaming as we know it, to changing development, to problems servers solve/create, to how quickly servers can be deployed, to their profitability and then their maybe-future long-term profitability.

I think this is one of those conversations they has gotten away from the point and maybe drawing a line under it would be the best for my sanity ;-)

I said we oversubscribe server capacity. That shouldn’t have implied that all products sold are oversubscribed. We oversubscribe bandwidth, that doesn’t mean you can’t order your own managed network or purchase a dedicated line for guaranteed bandwidth.

My opinion on the topic hasn’t changed. The industry will change because a) players are no longer linked to purchasing hardware to playing their games which is a remarkable shift in purchasing behaviour. How many families that typically don’t buy console hardware get upset that the sequel they played on 1 console is found on the next and they are gated as a result. Doesn’t have to happen with cloud.

(B) if over time cloud is the largest population of gamers, developers do not need to hold back on transitioning to new hardware features on a generational release.

I still haven’t changed my position on that. Everything you said about the difficulties of cloud deployment, lowering latency, costs etc don’t change those items for me. Sure it makes it harder; granted there are challenges to be solved. By why should developers and consumers care about those challenges ? As long as the service is provided and good, people will stop caring about getting and fighting over the next console. They are just going to play the game. They don’t need to worry about whether they are PC, PlayStation or Xbox or Nintendo and what console they have in that family. They just need to subscribe. Once all the inputs are supported on cloud on every device with great performance, Developers don’t need to think about multiple hardware configurations, they only need to target the latest hardware spec on cloud. How or when that arrives is entirely up to the service provider; i have no disillusionment that a generation switch over on cloud could be very costly and challenging. But that’s not my problem, if the service is heavily profitable they will figure it out.

 

[PSman1700]

So long there is local hardware, there will be games for it. MAC and pc's/mobiles will probably exist forever. Though i could see streaming growing larger and larger, most casual console gamers dont care what their games are running on, and most dont care about graphics quality being somewhat lower. The only thing most do on consoles is gaming and that can be done using a solid streaming service (if you have the infrastructure for it, which most have nowadays?).

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I said we oversubscribe server capacity. That shouldn’t have implied that all products sold are oversubscribed. We oversubscribe bandwidth, that doesn’t mean you can’t order your own managed network or purchase a dedicated line for guaranteed bandwidth.

I don't understand what you're saying here. It may help if you don't assume that everybody here understands the telecoms companies. I don't expect most people to understand the economics of server economics that's why my posts were quite long and set out the issues. You could do likewise but, as I said, and as Silent_Buddha also posted, gaming is very different to most other server hosting. and the models are incomparable.

My opinion on the topic hasn’t changed. The industry will change because a) players are no longer linked to purchasing hardware to playing their games which is a remarkable shift in purchasing behaviour. How many families that typically don’t buy console hardware get upset that the sequel they played on 1 console is found on the next and they are gated as a result. Doesn’t have to happen with cloud.

I 100% agree with this. Things that will change once local hardware ceases to be a viable option as cloud replaces it is some people will lose the option to game because of where they live or the internet service they can afford, and a bunch of people who having hardware and games gifted in a single act of generosity will also fall outside of games.

All of my old gaming hardware goes to one of two places: 1) family/friends who are in need, 2) children's hospitals and charities. The act of gifting is a simple act, but once the shift to services ensues, a lot of people will lose out. I'm not seeing anything economically that would suggest this is going to get a lot worse rather than better.

(B) if over time cloud is the largest population of gamers, developers do not need to hold back on transitioning to new hardware features on a generational release.

It's like you're ignored my and Silent_Buddha's posts entirely.

I still haven’t changed my position on that. Everything you said about the difficulties of cloud deployment, lowering latency, costs etc don’t change those items for me

What I read here is: I don't like the economics of how things are paid for so I will ignore it.

I really don't know how to respond to this. If you are doing to ignore factors, and the vectors of economic reality whilst trying to debate a point of a service-funded economic model then there is nowhere to go. I wish you well in your future fantasy land. The extraction they people will stop arguing is the best one. In a competitive market there will always be more than one option (because otherwise it's not competitive) and the pro/cons/preferences will always be a point of debate.

The people arguing PC/PlayStation/Xbox today will be arguing Nvidia Cloud/PS Now/xCloud tomorrow, nor will the issue of which games are available to which service subscribers.

 

[iroboto]

What I read here is: I don't like the economics of how things are paid for so I will ignore it.

I really don't know how to respond to this. If you are doing to ignore factors, and the vectors of economic reality whilst trying to debate a point of a service-funded economic model then there is nowhere to go. I wish you well in your future fantasy land. The extraction they people will stop arguing is the best one. In a competitive market there will always be more than one option (because otherwise it's not competitive) and the pro/cons/preferences will always be a point of debate.

It's not that I'm ignoring it. I just don't see how we can determine what the end solution will look like. Google and Netflix didn't start with hardware close to the customer when they started. It's only been the recent years that Netflix has been putting their hardware into our buildings to get closer to the customer. Same with everyone else. But it required growth, huge subscriber growth to get to that point. There was an obvious evolution of the service that had to occur to get to that point. Xcloud is still technically in beta, it's customer base a small fraction of a rounding error compared to the best in class you see today. I see a future where xcloud could be the most popular service, perhaps it's even possible the largest gaming platform, but part of me thinks it'll be dwarfed by things like Netflix in terms of subscriber base even at it's best. I don't know if xcloud will ever get to that point, so the type of solutions that MS may have to innovate may take it elsewhere.

And that's where I'm at; it's a wait and see, as opposed to, see what others did and xcloud needs to be that. It's not like I was privvy to MS meetings on how xcloud fits into the Azure stack. The path of xcloud will largely be determined by how many customers it's getting once it leaves beta. I can't say for sure it will follow the path of Netflix and the like.

The people arguing PC/PlayStation/Xbox today will be arguing Nvidia Cloud/PS Now/xCloud tomorrow, nor will the issue of which games are available to which service subscribers.

Hopefully not. At least we won't get to warring we have today.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

It's not that I'm ignoring it. I just don't see how we can determine what the end solution will look like. Google and Netflix didn't start with hardware close to the customer when they started.

Sorry to cut short a long post into brief quote, but I think this is crux of it. The vast amount of server-provided content is not predicated on latency, because if outbound data output takes 4ms and a response takes 27ms it will not be noticeable to the user. But games are entirely predicated on low-§latency between what you do on the input device verses seeing that on screen.

This can be be slow even with a local hardware loop so adding on the internet latency of sending input/controller input for processing, then waiting for receipt, processing and production of the output image.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

@DSoup Technology will solve most of these problems.

Here's the central argument: If I take any major city - only one in 10 console owners is using their hardware at any given time. So even accounting for inefficiencies and spikes in demand you only need 20% of the hardware you do right now to service the same gaming needs. So instead of 100 million console owners buying $400 consoles (average it out) for $40 billion dollars, MS just spends $8 billion on xCloud infrastructure and charges these gamers $120 per year for 5 years before upgrading the hardware. I believe $60 billion in revenue for 5 years is enough to pay the $8 billion for cloud server hardware, account for 50 dev teams cranking out games on GamePass (~$10 billion) and leaving plenty of money for profits and other maintenance issues that might pop up. That's where MS is trying to lead us. Some of us believe think it's possible and some of us don't. Count me in the believer optimistic camp.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Here's the central argument: If I take any major city - only one in 10 console owners is using their hardware at any given time. So even accounting for inefficiencies and spikes in demand you only need 20% of the hardware you do right now to service the same gaming needs.

And if you don't live in a major city? Is there data that shows most gamers live in major cities, and don't game outside of these locales? Because if so, why do stores sell games pretty much everywhere and not only in major cities?

I'm not really one for 'belief', whether it's religion, politics or technology. I like good old-fashioned empirical data.

 

[cheapchips]

And if you don't live in a major city? Is there data that shows most gamers live in major cities, and don't game outside of these locales? Because if so, why do stores sell games pretty much everywhere and not only in major cities?

I'm not really one for 'belief', whether it's religion, politics or technology. I like good old-fashioned empirical data.

83% of the US live in urban areas, which is generally defined as cities, but not specifically major ones. That's probably as far as you'd get with data, given how censuses are compiled. They aren't generally that interested in % of people who own a console in urban and rural areas.

United States - Urbanization 2020 | Statista

In 2020, about 82.66 percent of the total population in the United States lived in cities and urban areas.

www.statista.com

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Here's the central argument: If I take any major city - only one in 10 console owners is using their hardware at any given time.

Here's the problem with that, however. Over a 24 hour period, it may average out to that. However, it won't be uncommon that during prime time 5 out of 10 or more of the subscribers are likely to want to game depending on whether there was a highly anticipated game release. On release day or a few days after that it might jump up to 8, 9, or 10 out of 10 people hitting the servers at prime time.

We see this happen with Steam with highly anticipated releases where the servers will struggle to service all the download request. Steam attempts to mitigate this by having pre-loads for big releases. And obviously once the game is download you are no longer subject to whether or not Steam has enough servers as long as the system hasn't crashed. You can't do that with an on demand gaming service. You either service the request to play a game or you refuse service to that customer.

So, you either risk losing gamers if you refuse service to 60-80% (using your 20% number) of the subscriber base in that situation, greatly degrade their gaming experience by having servers over 1000 miles away servicing some of the requests (again risking losing subscribers), or you have the ability to service say 80% or more of the subscriber base during prime time (which means you need to figure out what to do with that hardware on off-prime time hours).

I'm going to assume that MS aren't incompetent and that their accountants are not OK with them burning cash on server hardware going unused, so MS obviously have an idea of what they might want to do with the XBS-X blades when they aren't servicing gaming requests. The question is, what services would be conducive to potentially being evicted from those blades on a moments notice if greater than expected demand (depending on the time of day) for those blades happens?

Regards,
SB

 

[Silent_Buddha]

83% of the US live in urban areas, which is generally defined as cities, but not specifically major ones. That's probably as far as you'd get with data, given how censuses are compiled. They aren't generally that interested in % of people who own a console in urban and rural areas.

United States - Urbanization 2020 | Statista

In 2020, about 82.66 percent of the total population in the United States lived in cities and urban areas.

www.statista.com

In the US, a population center with a population of 100k and that is incorporated as a city is considered a city. There are 331 of them in the US. I'm pretty sure MS won't be putting a data center in every city. 8 of them have a population greater than 1 million.

Of course, some of those are grouped in large metropolitan areas, like the Seattle metropolitan area which encompasses multiple cities and towns. So while Boise, ID (largest city in ID) may only have a population of about 237k, the metropolitan area (includes the cities of Nampa and Meridian as well as some smaller towns) is around half a million.

That still leaves many metropolitan areas with only 1 city of ~100k population or a small cluster of less than 250K.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

83% of the US live in urban areas, which is generally defined as cities, but not specifically major ones. That's probably as far as you'd get with data, given how censuses are compiled. They aren't generally that interested in % of people who own a console in urban and rural areas.

It would be interesting to see what the geographical distribution of gamers is in Norther America is. I mean, whether you like gaming or not, if you live in a city you have a lot of options for entertainment, whereas if you live in the backend of nowhere then your options may be another Saturday-might of cow-tipping or Gears 5, I know which I'd go for!.

 

[iroboto]

I'm going to assume that MS aren't incompetent and that their accountants are not OK with them burning cash on server hardware going unused, so MS obviously have an idea of what they might want to do with the XBS-X blades when they aren't servicing gaming requests. The question is, what services would be conducive to potentially being evicted from those blades on a moments notice if greater than expected demand (depending on the time of day) for those blades happens?

Slow scale up as per any business in this field. They aren’t going to dump billions into xcloud when there are not enough customers for it.

As for xcloud itself, it’s technology and the problem it solves can be used in other industries that will require remote low latency graphical applications. Ie remote controlling of robots; vehicles; drones; etc.

I don’t think Ms is going deep into xcloud just to satisfy a possible market full of casual gamers. It’s just the current largest obvious market. The R&D will be useful to them;

 

[Johnny Awesome]

And if you don't live in a major city? Is there data that shows most gamers live in major cities, and don't game outside of these locales? Because if so, why do stores sell games pretty much everywhere and not only in major cities?

I'm not really one for 'belief', whether it's religion, politics or technology. I like good old-fashioned empirical data.

I'm disappointed you tried to straw man this one. Change the word "believe" to "think" if that helps you get there.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I'm disappointed you tried to straw man this one. Change the word "believe" to "think" if that helps you get there.

No, the straw man argument here is that technology solves this or will imminently. I mean, if you know when much of the internet will reach the point where geographical latency will no longer be a barrier to online gaming and negate the need for local servers, we can talk.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Here's the problem with that, however. Over a 24 hour period, it may average out to that. However, it won't be uncommon that during prime time 5 out of 10 or more of the subscribers are likely to want to game depending on whether there was a highly anticipated game release. On release day or a few days after that it might jump up to 8, 9, or 10 out of 10 people hitting the servers at prime time.

We see this happen with Steam with highly anticipated releases where the servers will struggle to service all the download request. Steam attempts to mitigate this by having pre-loads for big releases. And obviously once the game is download you are no longer subject to whether or not Steam has enough servers as long as the system hasn't crashed. You can't do that with an on demand gaming service. You either service the request to play a game or you refuse service to that customer.

So, you either risk losing gamers if you refuse service to 60-80% (using your 20% number) of the subscriber base in that situation, greatly degrade their gaming experience by having servers over 1000 miles away servicing some of the requests (again risking losing subscribers), or you have the ability to service say 80% or more of the subscriber base during prime time (which means you need to figure out what to do with that hardware on off-prime time hours).

I'm going to assume that MS aren't incompetent and that their accountants are not OK with them burning cash on server hardware going unused, so MS obviously have an idea of what they might want to do with the XBS-X blades when they aren't servicing gaming requests. The question is, what services would be conducive to potentially being evicted from those blades on a moments notice if greater than expected demand (depending on the time of day) for those blades happens?

Regards,
SB

Actually it will be VERY uncommon for 50% to want the service at the same time. The number I gave IS for primetime. You can see that just from your friends list every night. Rarely will more than 20% of my friends be online even for peak times. Also, if you're MS you're going to make sure you don't release CoD on the same day as Forza.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

No, the straw man argument here is that technology solves this or will imminently. I mean, if you know when much of the internet will reach the point where geographical latency will no longer be a barrier to online gaming and negate the need for local servers, we can talk.

I'm not only talking to you, but you can chose to talk when you'd like.

I never spoke about imminency, but I do think that is the direction we are going in. Saying that sub-16ms latency Internet is never coming to most people is like saying we'll never need more than 640K. We're going to get there.

 

[iroboto]

I'm not only talking to you, but you can chose to talk when you'd like.

I never spoke about imminency, but I do think that is the direction we are going in. Saying that sub-16ms latency Internet is never coming to most people is like saying we'll never need more than 640K. We're going to get there.

5G is basically the requirement to enable cloud gaming. Just like 4G LTE was the enabler for mobile video streaming. If 5G isn't enough, I'd be surprised, then 6G would definitely be the one and there's not really a discussion point there, because I suspect we will be at 6G in 14 years, assuming that the launch date is 2030, 8 years from now.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Actually it will be VERY uncommon for 50% to want the service at the same time. The number I gave IS for primetime. You can see that just from your friends list every night. Rarely will more than 20% of my friends be online even for peak times. Also, if you're MS you're going to make sure you don't release CoD on the same day as Forza.

Interesting, so you are saying that you never ever see more than 20% of your friends list gaming at any given time at any point in the month/year even when there's multiple new game releases?

For me, at least once a week or once every other week I'll see 50% or more of my friends list gaming at the same time. When there's a hotly anticipated new release or multiple new releases that will jump up to 80-100% of my friend's list.

Sure, "most" of the time it won't be that high, but for gaming, you can't just have capacity for "most" of the time. You need to have capacity for peak numbers. Remember we're talking about some point in the future where Cloud gaming has transformed gaming such that all developers now have to develop for it. IE - a large enough number of gamers do all or most of their gaming via the Cloud. At that point you can't just tell a potential customer that you can't game now because we only have local server infrastructure for "most" of the time.

I'd also argue that cloud gaming would enable more concurrent gamers than the current physical console paradigm. Currently most families have to share one console. If you are gaming on the cloud, that is no longer the case and all members of that family would be able to game simultaneously if they wanted. Just as a recent example, when HFW (not a single family I know of has more than 1 PS5) and Elden Ring dropped, multiple families I know had to take turns playing those games. If the cloud was the dominant method with which to play games, they would have all had multiple members of the family playing those games simultaneously. In that case, even more of my friend's list would be playing games more often.

I guess I just have more gamers on my friends list.

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

Interesting, so you are saying that you never ever see more than 20% of your friends list gaming at any given time at any point in the month/year even when there's multiple new game releases?

For me, at least once a week or once every other week I'll see 50% or more of my friends list gaming at the same time. When there's a hotly anticipated new release or multiple new releases that will jump up to 80-100% of my friend's list.

Sure, "most" of the time it won't be that high, but for gaming, you can't just have capacity for "most" of the time. You need to have capacity for peak numbers. Remember we're talking about some point in the future where Cloud gaming has transformed gaming such that all developers now have to develop for it. IE - a large enough number of gamers do all or most of their gaming via the Cloud. At that point you can't just tell a potential customer that you can't game now because we only have local server infrastructure for "most" of the time.

I'd also argue that cloud gaming would enable more concurrent gamers than the current physical console paradigm. Currently most families have to share one console. If you are gaming on the cloud, that is no longer the case and all members of that family would be able to game simultaneously if they wanted. Just as a recent example, when HFW (not a single family I know of has more than 1 PS5) and Elden Ring dropped, multiple families I know had to take turns playing those games. If the cloud was the dominant method with which to play games, they would have all had multiple members of the family playing those games simultaneously. In that case, even more of my friend's list would be playing games more often.

I guess I just have more gamers on my friends list.

Regards,
SB

I got a 100 people in my friends list and I have to agree with Johnny sometimes Its only 2-3 people online. It's also typically the same people on the friends list that are active

 

[iroboto]

once a week or once every other week I'll see 50% or more of my friends list gaming at the same time. When there's a hotly anticipated new release or multiple new releases that will jump up to 80-100% of my friend's list.

Sure, "most" of the time it won't be that high, but for gaming, you can't just have capacity for "most" of the time. You need to have capacity for peak numbers. Remember we're talking about some point in the future where Cloud gaming has transformed gaming such that all developers now have to develop for it. IE - a large enough number of gamers do all or most of their gaming via the Cloud. At that point you can't just tell a potential customer that you can't game now because we only have local server infrastructure for "most" of the time.

I'd also argue that cloud gaming would enable more concurrent gamers than the current physical console paradigm. Currently most families have to share one console. If you are gaming on the cloud, that is no longer the case and all members of that family would be able to game simultaneously if they wanted. Just as a recent example, when HFW (not a single family I know of has more than 1 PS5) and Elden Ring dropped, multiple families I know had to take turns playing those games. If the cloud was the dominant method with which to play games, they would have all had multiple members of the family playing those games simultaneously. In that case, even more of my friend's list would be playing games more often.

I guess I just have more gamers on my friends list.

I've been going through documentation etc and I've seen no mention of a future where they have any intention to move to edge computing. Xcloud in beta only exists in Azure DCs and only in a select few.

Provided nothing changes for Xcloud, it will operate as I expected it will, in the data center and getting a maximum workout to service as many people as possible. Edge computing may be a possible future for it, but a lot of things would need to change for that to happen, and I'm talking about physical challenges that need resolution. Netflix and Google only have cache servers running within our COs. I haven't heard of companies putting in computing power within our CO's yet.