DuckThor Evil
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Microsoft Xbox Reveal Event - May 21, 2013
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Yep, also SD streaming is OK, but HD is infeasible (2007), streaming video over the Internet is a terrible idea, not enough bandwidth (2005), Cloud backup is too expensive to be available for consumers (~2000), etc, etc.
It's always a terrible idea until it isn't. The trick is to be forward looking enough to get ahead of the curve, but not too far ahead that you run into implementation problems. Both Sony (with their gaikai remote play stuff) and Microsoft appear to firmly believe the cloud is the future, and now is the time to jump in.
As I mentioned in the rumour thread, it may or may not happen this generation, but if it does, waiting till next gen to catch up is going to be ugly.
Look. Backing up data to the cloud isn't an activity you do in real-time. With a service like Netflix or YouTube I recognize that I don't have, and couldn't possibly accumulate that much video locally and understand that access to it is necessarily dependent on my internet connection. Gaikai is essentially the same bargain. With a "local" game that does nebulous "cloud processing" I'm sitting here with 40GB of content on my hard drive that I paid $60 for which won't fucking work as soon as it can't exchange 16KB updates with a server somewhere. And since we're bringing up stuff like YouTube, have you ever tried to watch a video during prime time on that site lately? I don't want my single player games to suddenly be subject to not only my bandwidth, the reliability of the cloud servers, the local wifi conditions, but also general network congestion and traffic shaping by ISPs. I guess if we're really lucky MS will start throwing hundreds of millions of dollars from Gold subscribers to bring down net neutrality so they can pay ISPs for preferential packet treatment.
I hate how the internet is always online-only
Especially Neogaf. Evillore is so anti-consumer.Yep, those world of Warcraft players really got shafted...
My point is that 5 years from now, the idea of a game that doesn't require an Internet connection will be as quaint as a game that can fit onto a CD. Sure, they'll exist, and people will reminisce about the good old days when consoles only used the Internet for video streaming, but all the top games will be online only. They'll have persistent changing worlds, they'll have thousands of AI actors. Imagine Skyrim, if it had all the people in the cities it should have had. And they were backed by the kinds of AI algorithms driving the top bots today that are almost beating the Turing test. And you actually spoke to them, like a real person, instead of picking conversation topics from a list, and they answered using cloud rendered text-to-speech that is currently almost good enough to pass, and is actively being improved.
Why would anyone want to go back to the sparse, scripted Skyrim of today? Heck, I tried to play Oblivion again, and I couldn't, because of how bad the facial animation was compared to Skyrim. Those dead, staring eyes...
scooby_dooby
Legend
I still don't buy it. Azure is extremely expensive, and relatively crap compared to Amazon's services. I had the unfortunate experience of building on it about 18mths ago. I assume it's gotten better since then, but they are still playing catchup.
Knowing MS like I do, they will most likely try and sell dev's on using Azure, and try and stick them with some massive hosting bill. I'd imagine saavy developers will use a Amazon anyways? If that's possible... not sure.
Is Azure even close to profitable yet? I really wonder how much traction Azure is getting with real clients... GOOGLE..., ok so 200,000 clients right now. Not bad not bad, but still a 71:20 split for Amazon/MS, solid growth though for sure.
At their last quarterly results they were all about Azure and it was a very strong quarter.
Maybe they're bsing but it sure seemed to be going well.
scooby_dooby
Legend
Imagine if you took a few thousand CELL's and put them up into a CLOUD somewhere!? Mind blown.
scooby_dooby
Legend
At their last quarterly results they were all about Azure and it was a very strong quarter.
Maybe they're bsing but it sure seemed to be going well.
Ya, see my edit. They are definately growing well (14% > 20% in 6mths) but remain a distant second.
RenegadeRocks
Legend
Not really, MS has clearly said that indie game publishing is just like the x360, no change at all. A friend of mine in a compny in Poland has the same experience. They have got 4 ps4 dev kits but no XBone. And thats before the conference happened. Indies know what in store ! Even Tom schaefer has announced his displeasure. And so have a lot of other indies ! Theres an article Bout it on destructoid.
.and I do care about Indie titles. Thomas Was Alone in a pure gem not to be missed at all. So is Cave Story , Lone Survivor( unsurprisingly coming to Sony devices), and hist will never end..... Indies are the industry, they are the future devs.
This tends to be a self limited problem for anyone buying a $400 console though.
Emerging markets like China, South America, I'm sure high speed broadband is on it's way too being ubiquitous. And you really only need worry about first world+emerging.
I'm sure there are corner cases and that sucks if it's you, though. Hell Xbox 2001 being broadband only (while my Dreamcast worked on dial up) was initially a problem for me back then.
RenegadeRocks
Legend
Xbone also doesn't have a/V out either fore those who spent the last gen on sd tvs.
RenegadeRocks
Legend
They seem to be targetting only and only the US and europe with it. Anyways, even if I do get a high speed stable connection, their servers won't be anywhere close enough to me for any kindof realtime computing communictions.
Their philosophy seems to be that all of these features are for t he US and the basic game s console hardware is enough to be sold as a PS4 competitior to the rest of the world. None of the features they showed me in the conference will work for me. Only games will and they seem okay with that even if their hardware is a bit lesser powered than the ps4. They are assuming the runaway success in the US will drive the rest of the world too.
Greenberg specifically said emerging markets were a big target on major nelson.
That's basically why these slides existed, why they expect growth.
Those people paid to play with other people, not a chatbot.
I don't know, I think I'll take an RPG with dialogue created by a talented writer and performed by a talented voice actor over machine generated quest bots anyday.
Here's a question. Are these simulated worlds going to live forever in the cloud? If I stop playing my Skyrim 2 for Xbox One am I going to find a year later all my deeds have been erased because Azure was tired of simulating a land I didn't seem to want anymore? Can games get retired from Cloud services, like an old EA sports title? Is my game only safe as long as my Xbox Live Gold membership checks clear? How will any of us play anything when Anonymous wages a month long DDOS attack on Xbox servers in anger over the used game situation?
RenegadeRocks
Legend
Was watching the interview at gameinformer with the system architect, (the only portion enjoyable during the conference was with him) and fankly , he is usung the cloud word a bit too much. Whenthe interviewerasked about Xbone having 5gb ram for games and Ps4 having more (and faster GDDR5) , what he tries to day os that Xbox has 'teh Cloud' so doesn't need that much power in the hardware. Of course he was just trying to wrestle out of that direct question, but they are touting 'teh Cloud' too much ! You can't just offload all calculations to the cloud and get them back in realtime as fast as being done on the console.
Misleading the people !
Misleading the people !
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