Microsoft Digital Events [2021]

I hope the blades will be updated for XCloud soon, because that's what limits the service for now. Also they need more regions and COVID does not help with the production.

Regarding E3....MS now can have a lot of events - from Quake Con, to Bethesda's event to E3 their own event.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure if these events are replacement for particular events (such as E3 etc) or if they're more of a Microsoft will hold them when they have something to announce.

I saw some say these won't be the same sort they had last year and won't be like This Week On Xbox or Inside Xbox. Maybe they will be like Nintendo Direct?

 

There are Inside Xbox no?

Though I hope Microsoft pumps the PR machine more in the future at least. More events, more games, more commercials about GamePass etc. Guess they are waiting for server blade updates/

 

they have said that the xcloud blades are coming 'in the spring' so I'm guessing, end of Q1- start of Q2? I would imagine in reality they are already being installed but just not being used for xcloud yet.

looking at the events microsoft currently has and will have in the future

Currently (minutes of show content)
e3 - 90 mins
x0 - 60 mins (roughly)

quakecon - ?? note sure, I'll call it 60 mins

for a total of 210 mins or 3h 30 minutes

Going forward I think it would do them really good to have two 90 minute shows per year, spaced ~ 6 months apart with an interim smaller show thats more in the style of a nintendo direct or what sony does for smaller shows focussing on a a couple of games ( i forgot what sony calls their shows that focus on a single game) that occurs between the two bigger shows, so in total you would have 4 events per year.

I think one of those smaller shows would coincide with quakecon, I'm not saying that quakecon should be replaced with a 30 min pre-recorded show, but that at quakecon there would be a deep dive into a game (likely a zenimax associated game)


So I would propose

e3 show - June
quakecon+ smaller show - August
x0 - november/december
smaller show - feb/march

the smaller shows wouldnt be for announcing big games, but would be for doing deeper looks at already announced games, so for instance you might get gameplay/dev interviews for avowed for instance. Things like grounded, smaller games could be announced at the smaller shows though

each smaller show would be 30 mins of content roughly so overall you would end up with slightly more overall show length over a year, with a total of 4 hours

 

Here's their first gaming related event...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/event/aiandgaming2021/

Not sure if there is a fee or not.

Tommy McClain

 

Not usually. Sometimes they limit participation to certain types of account, i.e. those that match with MSDN credentials but there is no suggestion of that here.

 

They're likely assuming this will be a small targeted audience for each session since it's hosted on Teams. So their estimate is under 20,000 attendees (I'm assuming the extended the limit since the pandemic is still happening). Or their limits don't apply to their own events.


sourced from @ https://nerdschalk.com/microsoft-teams-limit/#microsoft-teams-participants-limit

 

With Dr Peter Lee, who is the head of Microsoft Research and Incubations opening the event with a 5 minute session I bet he is going to announce that microsoft has/will be starting a game technology research group.

double or nothing that Dr Chris Bishop from Microsoft Research Cambridge will run the research group, tbh I am only guessing that because while poking around I found that he did a podcast with phil spencer in 2019, link below. Also he is doing the opening remarks on day 2 of the event, thats the other reason.

Or maybe not.

This event should be really interesting, I'm especially looking forward to the computational creativity session on Day 1 of the event, hopefully the representative from embark studios will present a more current version of her very impressive work that she showed off in, iirc 2019, on procedural world generation


Game on with Dr. Chris Bishop and Phil Spencer - Microsoft Research

 

There's been talk that xbox is going to reveal something next week.
Speculation has been it's the double FPS that we've not heard anything about since prior to XS launch.

But I wonder if it's tied to this event in someway.
It would be nice if they have things that aren't just in R&D stages to talk about.
AI texture compression comes to mind also, maybe it was able to be retro fitted into a title that's still in active use, sea of thieves or something.

 

Rumor has it on or around the 17th is when more news about the Backwards Compatibility (BC) program will be released. Same rumors also leaning heavily towards doubling framerates on some BC games that will work with it.

My personal opinion is that way too many folks including gaming sites have the wrong impression on the Microsoft Technical ML & AI for Developers event. There won't be any consumer facing news at that event. But the gaming sites will somehow find a way to spin the nonevents and topics as to having huge impacts for gamers today. Anyone expecting consumer news from this will be disappointed because the gaming sites have got it all wrong. They will all be wrong.

 

If any gaming sites pick up and start hyping Microsoft Ignite, their March 2nd-4th developer event, they're entirely wrong again.

 

Although not for the wider general gaming community, it does specifically say gaming.
So I'm hoping for some intresting things to come out of it for discussion here.

Actually thought it was this week not next.

 

I just got a reminder email about the AI and Gaming Research summit that has a more detailed schedule, including some additional guest speaker information.

In the five minute introduction session that originally only lister Peter Lee, he will know be joined by Haiyan Zhang and Sam Devlin.


Haiyan Zhang is very interesting because she is the Xbox chief of staff, a position she started in January 2020. Prior to that, from 2013-2015 she was the innovation director at lift labs (I presume Lift london, which never released a game before being shut down, to my knowledge). From there she was an innovation director at microsoft research until becoming a senior director of innovation/ technical advisor to Chris Bishop. (who is the head of MSR cambridge)


What does the xbox chief of staff actually do? I know what a chief of staff does for someone like a politician, but I dont see how that would translate to a large organisation such as xbox. Maybe they are further along in their investment into all things 'AI and gaming research' than I suspected.

 

It will be fascinating - and it is already happening - when MS will start using its research division for gaming too. They a big research division no?

 

Yeah Microsoft research is pretty big, they have 1100 scientists and engineers working on purely original research. As I understand it there are more people than that working on R&D, I'm certain of it infact because Microsoft spent $19.2B on R&D in 2020, you would only need a very small slice of that to make a huge difference to the gaming side of things.

The first party side of things is getting to the point where investment in game production research and things like procedural content generation will pay dividends. Lets say they sink a couple of billion into making a suite of tools that let game designers build worlds twice as fast, even without leveraging those tools to sell azure or whatever they would still make their money back just in improved first party efficiency.

 

Playfab is already there to roll things like that into.
Ninja theory is a good little example of a studio in its own right that does that kind of R&D.

As said they will have so many 1P studios to make use of any research, then things like Playfab to roll it out externaly.

As for AI/ML their very big into it in general, as they have azure. Only makes sense for it to be leveraged in gaming R&D.

I'm just hoping event has some substance to it

 

I really wouldn't expect too much here, except if you're a developer looking at new techniques or a researcher. This isn't how MS generally does product launches or announcements. This is more in line with how they interact with academics and to a lesser degree related industry professionals.

It's an MSR event, and those are generally extremely technical with minimal to no product news. The only really notable thing is that it's gaming focused. That's new for an MSR event, pretty sure.