I guess the Internet is now the NEW Move Controller
Oops, I meant to say "included in the box".
Has consumer pressure ruined gaming for the next decade? *spawn
- Thread starter joker454
- Start date
Oops, I meant to say "included in the box".
The interesting part of that question is it doesn't need to even be answered. That internet is now optional is enough for developers to not support anything cloud related, because ultimately "optional" maps to "developers please don't support this", unless mandated like with 1st parties.
Gosh I would hope so.
Quite a bit of money has been lost by companies attempting to even just make mmo's. I would say getting someone to finance what you suggest would be an exercise in futility. With xb1's large (and formerly guaranteed internet) audience, consistent tools and (presumably) discounted servers, developers would be far better off learning to crawl before they can walk. A band of developers getting together and attempting a large multi platform project would likely just go broke. Instead I'd suggest they are better off taking baby steps first with heavy latency tolerant systems and then gradually growing from there. With Microsoft supplying cheaper servers and free tools makes it a financially safe way to build your cloud code over time. I never thought it would be a quick process, in fact I expect it will take a brutally long time so the sooner we get started the better.
What is this Blizzard you speak of or this WOW ?? Do these mythical things somehow make money even though there is NO guarantee that the computers that they run on are connected to this Internet Peripheral ???
I don't know about you guys but I think this whole Internet Peripheral thing ... you know being connected and such ... is gonna be BIG BIG BIG !!! ;-)
The topic is wrong, it got spawned from my post yet my post has nothing to do with that. I presume its a bogus topic just to get people to look at the thread at my expense, well whatever that's not my problem.
What I've been trying to get an answer to with my spu question is if people think having something optional will have no effect on developer support. That ties into my claim of not requiring internet would affect developer plans to support cloud, hence why I was asking if spu's were optional would that have affected developer use of spu's. It doesn't seem like anyone wants to answer that, yet at the same time people seem happy to claim that not requiring internet magically would not affect developer support of cloud.
I suppose we have to then agree to disagree. I believe strongly innovation can and will happen. There are many good avenues to innovate and start at low cost. Especially so now that consoles are very close to pc architecture and reasonable performance so it should be easier to shoot for lowest common denominator on local hardware and distribute on all the platforms.
I see games like the star citizen and elite doing well on kickstarter. There is no reason not to believe if somebody comes with awesome killer idea it wouldnt get done and funded.
Also the usual non online companies are investing more and more to online enabled content and games(oblivion mmo anyone...). It's just that online might not be the magic bullet to make better AI or better physics. There are a lot of obstacles where reliability, latency and lowest bandwidth supported are not trivial to overcome. Especially so if gamers will stop playing your game if they hit the worst case too often.
Well I don't disagree with that, it will happen one way or the other. It just seemed like Microsoft could have accelerated what otherwise may be a glacial process with their backing of the servers, tools, large audience and so on. It's kind of like how iD put gpu's on the map with their support of them, sometimes one thing can kickstart an entire industry.
Sure the obstacles are not trivial but that's all the reason to get people universally on board sooner than later.
Geez you could have fooled me because based on what you first wrote because you seem to be suggesting that the PS4 and the XB1 are just versions of the 2600 because MS did a 180 on the always connected thing.
SPU isn't the same thing. Before the Cell processor there was NO SPU, there was no one making big bucks on it, there was no coding infrastructure for it ... unlike the the Internet which has all of that.
Even the GPU less console doesn't work all that well although it is interesting if we look back into the dark reaches of time. Quake didn't always support what was to become the GPU but after a time users got a glimpse of what can be done when you attach a 3dfx card to the end of your video card and they liked it. It took a bit of time but games accelerated by these new fangled gadgets became more and more popular. If Der Cloud adds value to consumer it will do quite well just like GPUs.
Fine ... there will be an effect but one that I think if FAR more limited than you think. But the Cloud isn't going away, Dedicated servers are not going away. DLC, F2P etc etc will not be going away. MS will be using this Cloud PR extravaganza for quite some time. I hear they are real big into networking services
If the PS4/XB1 turn out to be just another Atari 2600 then bake me a crow pie.
I think the concern over innovation is legitamate but I am not at all convinced that MS is the company to take risk and invest to bring those innovative gaming concepts to the marketplace.
The indie developers are the ones who are most likely to come up with something new so perhaps instead of arguing for cloud and DRM it makes more sense to see what sort of infrastructure is needed to support small studios.
To me the barrier to entry for cloud and so forth are too high for most independents, the cloud will be used for Activision, EA and Ubisoft primarily I am not convinced that any of those publishers will do something creative and innovative.
The indie developers are the ones who are most likely to come up with something new so perhaps instead of arguing for cloud and DRM it makes more sense to see what sort of infrastructure is needed to support small studios.
To me the barrier to entry for cloud and so forth are too high for most independents, the cloud will be used for Activision, EA and Ubisoft primarily I am not convinced that any of those publishers will do something creative and innovative.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yup, it is inevitable, IMO that more and more games will go to requiring online and potentially much better features in games. I've already pointed out my depressing experience with world AI entities in Mafia II. A game which did an admiral attempt at recreating the feel of a populated city, but which was ultimately let down by the absolutely horrendous world NPC AI. I don't blame the game for that, however, I blame the lack of local resources to dedicated to AI versus dedicating it to more important or "flashier" things (like physics). I can only imagine how much better it could have been with cloud based (or server side for those that hate the cloud word) AI.
The same goes for basically any open world game set in a location with a large or dense population (like a city). GTA, Saints Row, LA Noire, etc. could be vastly improved with some cloud resources dedicated to world AI.
I got depressed when MS removed the online requirement of the console as, like you, I knew it would help to slow down the inevitable progress of gaming. Since instead of 2 major gaming platforms having reliable internet connection (Xbox One and PC) we now have 2 major platforms that developers can't rely on a user having an internet connection (PS4 and Xbox One).
Yes, PC's don't come with a tag saying that Internet is required, but I'd be surprised if more than a very small minority of gaming capable PC's didn't have access to the internet. Hard to browse the internet and check e-mail (2 of the more common PC tasks) without it. Unlike consoles where those will be ancilliary things that people may or may not bother to hook their console to the internet for.
Regards,
SB
The thread title says is gaming ruined for the next decade. I never said that. What I said is that next gen is not offering anything new compared to current gen aside from a graphics bump. E3 was mostly the same games, the same franchises, the same play mechanics all with a new coat of paint.
You're missing the point of the question, I'm not wasting anymore cycles trying to explain the point to you.
The funny thing is you have this all backwards. For MS the CLOUD is what they are selling. The XB1 is merely a device that will be using it. XBOX 365 is what it really is. MS could care less if you are using their services to buy pizza or support some non-interactive physics in a single player game. Live is the point games aren't.
I guess developers will never code anything interesting ever again without the CLOUD !!. Lazy Developers
I don't accept your premise at all I'm sorry. You are trying to compare the Internet to a kinect 1 or a Move controller or a FIT board or something like that ... it plainly isn't. To be honest the only thing that MAY loose a bit of momentum is some AI, light maps and non-interactive physics stuff being offloaded to a server in a single player game. This is not something that is a slam dunk like MP stuff. Oh well I guess it will be up to devs just like it would have been if MS didn't do a 180.
Well Microsoft's track record with regards to online is pretty good. Before they came on the scene online in console games was primitive. Microsoft with XBLive revolutionized online play in the console space, and made standard many of the things we just come to expect from console games today. Given that it seems like they aren't a bad candidate to take use of online that one extra step towards compute, at least as far as infrastructure, tools and support is concerned.
Small studios would get cloud support as far as I know, as for Indie's I have no clue, perhaps not. I haven't followed the xb1 in much detail at all once they eliminated mandatory online so I honestly have no clue what the state of indies are on that box. On the one hand I can understand wanting indies to have full access to everything, but on the other hand you do want a base level of quality for all titles. Maybe they could do something like Steams Greenlight program, let people have full access to the box but their games can only get on the store if they get greenlit by the gamers.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
There's at least one Indie developer making an Indie cloud based game exclusive to Xbox One. Can't remember it off the top of my head but it was featured during Microsoft's E3 presentation.
Regards,
SB
So, maybe I'm just being thick here... But what, except for a "Screw you guys, I'm going home!"-mentality, is preventing MS from implementing lots of these things on a voluntary basis? Just throw up an "Enable Xbox Live Cloud" (or whatnot) prompt/toggle, after which you could get discless play etc. as long as the console can call the mothership regularly and as long as the disc isn't used on another console? If you loose contact or the disc is used somewhere else, the game gets disabled until the disc is available for verification again.
While I'm not sold on an always on-line requirement, I'd still enable that.
Makes me think MS' original business plans were probably quite a bit more limiting than the more optimistic always on-line advocates are purporting.
At any rate, they royally mismanaged this whole thing; that's for sure.
While I'm not sold on an always on-line requirement, I'd still enable that.
Makes me think MS' original business plans were probably quite a bit more limiting than the more optimistic always on-line advocates are purporting.
At any rate, they royally mismanaged this whole thing; that's for sure.
AI was a big one for me where cloud could be a game changer. I got mass flack for this back in the day, but I used to argue the point to colleagues that code would never replace humans for ai. I'm still not a big believer in code giving us sufficient ai really, and it certainly has yet to be demonstrated to me in even the most recent games. I'd argue that human ai needs to be farmed on a mass scale, which year ago sounded a bit ridiculous but today it can be a reality given how prevalent internet is. I'm going to keep an eye on xb1 first partly games and see where they go with that, but ultimately I suspect we'll have to wait for a game of GTA6 scope, a game with the budget and audience large enough to where they can potentially support optional cloud and give us something new on the ai front. At least I hope so because advances in game ai feel like they have been stagnant for years.
Well as far as anybody has been saying most of the added value of the cloud for single player games is really just eye candy. AI is the only thing that adds anything more than Pretty Pixels.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I wouldn't put it as prettier pixels as a lot of the stuff (cloud based physics for non-latency important effects, for example) doesn't actually make any of the pixels prettier. I'd say more along the lines of a more believable, dynamic, and coherent world. Along with things that could potentially affect gameplay but not in a "twitch" sense.
Regards,
SB
L. Scofield
Veteran
The whole "without the online requirement embedded in the console nobody will make us of teh cloud!" argument is stupid.
There's already a genre of games that target people with (somewhat) stable online connections, even when the platform doesn't guarantee it. You may have heard of them, from what I gather they sell very well. They're called ONLINE MULTIPLAYER GAMES.
All that nonsense you wrote in the OP is just that, nonsense joker. If the cloud is so amazingly great for gaming, where are the goods? Didn't Microsoft designed the Xbox One to be always online from the beginning? Where are all the amazing features only possible because of the cloud? They don't exist because it's only PR vaporware.
Seriously, I'm disappointed in you.
There's already a genre of games that target people with (somewhat) stable online connections, even when the platform doesn't guarantee it. You may have heard of them, from what I gather they sell very well. They're called ONLINE MULTIPLAYER GAMES.
All that nonsense you wrote in the OP is just that, nonsense joker. If the cloud is so amazingly great for gaming, where are the goods? Didn't Microsoft designed the Xbox One to be always online from the beginning? Where are all the amazing features only possible because of the cloud? They don't exist because it's only PR vaporware.
Seriously, I'm disappointed in you.
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