News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[Silent_Buddha]

I think you'll find a lot of games are moving in the "online only" direction made recently famous by Sim City. I hope to see offline single-player games as well, but if a developer can rely on always having the cloud available, they'll find ways to integrate it into the game experience, even for single player.
I don't think so. I'd be very surprised if both companies don't go this direction. In which case it comes down to how easy to use and reliable your cloud APIs are. Sony does not have a lot of experience in this area, but their Gaikai purchase indicates they want to get that experience. Wouldn't take much to extend the current Gaikai model to a generic cloud computing infrastructure.

This is important and people should take notice. The always online (if it happens for games) on Xbox and potentially Playstation in the future isn't a wholly Microsoft driven thing.

UBIsoft, Activision-Blizzard , and EA have all been heavily investing in games which require always online connectivity for the game for the past 3-4 (or more) years. It is a direction that game publishers want to go and the console makers will generally facilitate what the publishers want if it's in their own interests as well.

Right. The trouble with Simcity was underestimating the load requirements. Easy enough to do when you're rolling your own. Anything offered by the console companies would be a lot more managed I'd think. You can probably still roll your own, but they'd want to make it as easy as possible to integrate cloud features into your game, just like Kinect features, PS eye features, gaikai features.

This is also key, and has been shown time and time and time again since the first 2 major modern MMO's were launched (UO and even more so Everquest).

For any game requiring an online connection the load on the servers is generally greatest in the first 2-4 weeks (Everquest and WoW are significant in that they are somewhat major outliers in that load continued to grow for years after initial launch, that is pretty rare, however.).

Unfortunately, even knowing that, most companies cannot afford to have enough servers and infrastructure to support that initial load as what will they be used for once the initial 2-4 week load subsides and then starts to shrink quite drastically. It'd be a money losing proposition. Hence, you see something like EA contracting with Amazon to use their servers to handle that initial load. Unfortunately Amazon isn't exactly a veteran player in the world of online computer game hosting.

Move on to Durango. In theory, if Microsoft plays its hand well, it will support the server infrastructure itself. Part of the royalties from games sold on the platform would go towards upgrading and maintaining this.

With staggered product launches being managed by Microsoft in conjunction with the publishers you can then have a large and suitably robust server infractructure to handle the initial load on product launches that most individual publishers not named Blizzard-Activision could hope to manage while still being financially profitable.

Those staggered product launches would mean that as load peters off for one product another new product would be launching that would then put a load on it. If server load doesn't peter off as soon as expected it'll also be much easier for Microsoft to increase server and infrastructure capacity due to their large cash balance, and then recouping that cash outlay via the royalty stream coming in from multiple publishers using that service.

Of course, if this is how things play out, Sony will likely have to offer something similar. And that appears to be the case as they went out of their way to mention multiple times that the PS4 will always be connected. Hence, developers can rely on the PS4 being connected in order to support their games requiring always on internet in a similar way to how they can rely on the Durango to be always connected.

Where something like this breaks down is when the publishers have to host the server infrastructure themselves, as seen in the PC gaming world. Well, again, Publishers not named Activision-Blizzard.

Hell just being able to support day and date digital download purchases expose this. Just look at Steam whenever a hugely anticipated game is released.

Regards,
SB

 

[(((interference)))]

It could be, but his first post seems to rule that out.

Originally Posted by bkilian
"Always Connected", not "Connected most of the time", not "Connected only when a game starts". "Always Connected".

And agrees with what i'm hearing by the way - ie 'always online' is not a feature devs can choose to opt in for, it's a key part of the system's design and changing it to include an offline mode (though possible) represents a significant change to MS's plans.

Barring such a change, the only things that will work offline are the network troubleshooter and bluray playback.
That much I know that for a fact.

 

[bkilian]

Guys, a hint - if bkilian is saying your misinterpreting the data, then i'd listen to him.

From what I'm hearing, 'always online/connected' definitely means just that (as bkilian explicated) and games are not playable when offline.

If they've changed it recently then great, but it represents a significant reversals of their plans for the machine.

I didn't say that. What I said is that to me, "always online" means that I can design a game that requires a connection, and not worry that I'm splitting my userbase. My extrapolation from that is that most, if not all, games will use this functionality in some way.

Edit: A side effect of this would be that the console maker, who cannot tell if a game is going to use the connection or not (well, he could if it were spelled out in a manifest or something, but let's not quibble), probably has to be safe and require the connection be up at all times.

Everyone keeps talking about it as if it's a DRM thing, but I think that's the least of the functionality here.

 

[(((interference)))]

As I thought the "new" Xbox logo seems to be a fake:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=51412191&postcount=121

Good pickup by GAF.

They're probably just going to use the redesigned Metro-style Xbox logo after all.

I didn't say that. What I said is that to me, "always online" means that I can design a game that requires a connection, and not worry that I'm splitting my userbase. My extrapolation from that is that most, if not all, games will use this functionality in some way.

Everyone keeps talking about it as if it's a DRM thing, but I think that's the least of the functionality here.

Yes, it's not a DRM thing, for one it allows devs more flexibility to integrate the Cloud with their games.

Just like why they're including Kinect as a pack in, once you know the entirety of your user base has access to a feature, then you can rely on it for your games.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think you'll find a lot of games are moving in the "online only" direction made recently famous by Sim City. I hope to see offline single-player games as well, but if a developer can rely on always having the cloud available, they'll find ways to integrate it into the game experience, even for single player.

"Shroud of the Avatar" has always-on features, so playing solo, you interact with other players in terms of what shops and houses they build etc. They've added an offline solo version as it was asked for, but it's one example of where the 'cloud' (stupid term IMO) can contribute to the game without it being multiplayer. Devs won't need to create whole worlds for solo players to explore, because the users can do that in their playing.

I wouldn't be surprised if solo games become diminished. You'll be able to play solo offline, but the game will be designed around online. Like FPSes with a 5 hours solo campaign that are really designed for and get VFM from online play.

 

[Jwm]

Reading up on AOAC (Always On, Always Connected) I have to think this is not a mandate to the consumer, but mearly a feature set that overall is an improvement to what we had in the past.

Low power state for the device (Xbox) with the ability to wake a router from sleep (again only if connected, not required) via ethernet or wifi. It has distinct advatages when allowed to be used, so I just can't see this as a bad thing. I wonder if the negative rumors around the always online, are just publications not fully understanding what the AOAC is.

If you are allowing this mode as a consumer and your device is sleeping, I imagine you will still get notifications. (speculation on my part)--> With the HDMI in, your device can give you skype, game invites, and other important notifications while you are watching TV. If you choose you can then wake the Xbox to interact, unless they have an arm core that already can handle these apps in that lower power state. (something like a Surface RT on the board)

--
Something I worry about with the rumors of the DRM types, a large part of the consumer audience is low tech users buying these for kids and putting it in the play room. They never connect it to the internet, they probably never put the disc in the console. The 5-year old puts in a Lego game and wants to play. Many of my friends fall directly into this category, both neighbors on each side do this now that I think about it.

If MS adopts some of the things discussed here, I think it hurts them much more than we know. I wonder, why would MS make the console harder to use for the low tech knowledge user. I can't see my neighbor using passes to allow her son to play something. The extent she is willing to be involved is buying the game at the store. Sad but true.

So how much of this is wishful thinking from sites wanting headline stories, and how much of this rumor will come to pass. With most devices moving to be easier to use, easier to connect, easier to play. How could MS make such DRM easier to use over the current "put in disc and play"? Part of this makes me think the no used games things is nothing more than wishful thinking in some cases. Or MS will just supply the tools, and the publisher gets to implement the features if they wish.

 

[liolio]

I know it, there are possibilities of everything being real, I'm not saying "rumors are false", what I'm mean is "rumor are rumors, can be true or false, but I will not believe all what I've readed on internet".

Well Edge is a serious magazine they are not exactly running after clicks, they have standards, VGleaks seems to have legit and extensive info too and there are other noises that go in that direction (not to mention MSFT own actions with the 360).

So the odds that is real are extremely high but that is not what I want to discuss now.
It is not a matter of believing blindly what is on the Internet (or elsewhere), it is a matter of understanding what the decision process is in a gigantic corporation as MSFT.

They have worked on the project for years, they must have done studies, weighted the pro and con, etc.
That may have taken quiet some time, then we speak a billion dollars business, everything that get out of MSFT might have been green lighted many times at the highest level.
So I think people don't to get the implication of that, if something like "always connected" have made it in pretty late SDK... they are damned serious about it.

To the point I don't think they will change it because people complain on the web. Think the decision process, the higher OPs have not made their decision on a whim, they had material to study, pov of various underlings, etc. Still they decided what they decided.
Now for somehow to change that (looking at what I see in other enterprises and at a lesser degree) it is extremely difficult, if only because the "mechanics" of the enterprise.
To the higher ops to reconsider their pov, it would take somebody important enough to say "guys I think that I messed with my studies or I think we've been a bit too bullish / or what not.
Usually nobody does, if it gets to the ears of the higher ops, it will be considered either knee jerk, or worse the consequences could be terrible like "do you think that it is a game? A billion Dollars game? You were not serious about it? We are not playing". Pretty much you end up with a guy fired (and imo for a good reason).
But there is worth, at the different level of the decision level your have responsibilities but also egos...

So it is not about believing the Interweb or not, when I think the odds are low for MSFT to change that late it is because I can imagine how complex the decision process is, the implications for every body in charge and overall a dynamic that you see in many (if not every) enterprises (not always for the best).

They have consider people complaining on the web and still made their choice, knee jerking at the last minute would mean somebody has not done its job, express its doubt loud enough or presented bad data, etc. it also mean for the others and their ego that they have been "trumped" somehow.
Let that sink all together for a while and then consider how not easy it is to change even something that on the contrary to hardware is not set in stone.

NB my wording is poor definitely I would do better in French, it sounds naive as presented but still consider it seriously.

 

[Tap In]

liolio, good points.


Also reads fine. Much better than I would do in French!

 

[RobertR1]

Fable 2 was a great example of a Single Player RPG that was greatly enhanced by Online. The floating orbs really made the game a lot more fun and immersive. It believe it's the first to do so on consoles.

Being able to count on an internet connection could really open things up for gameplay and experience.

As I said before, the overall society trend is quickly shifting to a "connected" world and will continue to head in that direction. Asking people to have their console connected to an internet connection in 2013 and onwards isn't absurd.

I'd also imagine that the people with 360 that are connected also are the most profitable customers for MS. That alone will be a big factor.

 

[ERP]

SimCity seems to show that not every developer knows how to function as a form of MMO company, even with the much, much, more lax requirements server-side for SimCity.
Neither the game design, gameplay, game balance, or system functionality appear to have been vetted the way a properly online service should have been.

The Beta was too limited and too late to do anything useful about what was discovered.
It's pretty much impossible to simulate real load until you see it.
There is always contention between wanting an extended beta and how that impacts marketing and release timing.
I've said for years that EA doesn't have the patience to do a good MMO.

 

[3dilettante]

I believe it was worse than that.
The restricted pool and negligently short time limits had the upshot of hiding other fundamentally broken parts of the simulation. The beta and the press preview turned up sync delays and problems, despite the lack of load and in the case of the press previews regions that were prebuilt to EA's specifications.

At best, it was a hype-generator in which finding out if the system worked was not a priority.
At worst, the odd specificity of the setup and time limits were there because they knew when the worst problems would crop up before the game went on sale.


To put this back to the console topic, the big problem is that once you make a game's base functions cloud based, a lot of things become "All Your Fault", and if I were Microsoft, I'd be very afraid of accepting EA's raft of problems under the umbrella of my console's being able to function in the eyes of the consumer.

The problem SimCity shows for cloud games is that it's not Amazon's cloud service being taken to task. Devs can tell a perfectly good cloud service to run a craptastic application.
Microsoft may very well increase the use of cloud gaming, but I'd be wary of overextending its integration with the Xbox to the point that the console can be the rug under which the likes of EA's studios can hide their culpability.

 

[Cyan]

Fable 2 was a great example of a Single Player RPG that was greatly enhanced by Online. The floating orbs really made the game a lot more fun and immersive. It believe it's the first to do so on consoles.

Being able to count on an internet connection could really open things up for gameplay and experience.

As I said before, the overall society trend is quickly shifting to a "connected" world and will continue to head in that direction. Asking people to have their console connected to an internet connection in 2013 and onwards isn't absurd.

I'd also imagine that the people with 360 that are connected also are the most profitable customers for MS. That alone will be a big factor.

That I agree with. The world is more connected than it used to be, and I have had Internet at home back in 1997, when I was a kid, daily -although limited to certain hours-.

Besides that, I have had a permanent internet connection here where I live since 2006.

But online only is too limiting and weary for people, as I already pointed out before.

The problems with an online only system are still there for me:::.

- ISPs can fail sometimes

- the router too

- XBL isn't always on (Nintendo WiiU online went down yesterday because of technical difficulties)

- I have had 5 fried routers in the last two years

- Having to enter the password of your Wi-Fi connection every time you want to play in a different place (like bringing your console to a friend's house) sucks.

- People moving. I had someone asking me in a pm if Diablo 3 was playable offline time ago, because he was about to move. If not, he'd buy Torchlight 2 instead

- Online can enhance some games, for sure, but it always depends on who you are playing with.

- Some people don't have a stable wi-fi connection in their room, because of distance, and maybe they can't just take the router to a closer place, especially when it's shared.

- This article says: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-15-were-not-always-online-games-shouldnt-be-either

"The most basic and intractable problem with always-online games is that for a very large number of people, the Internet isn't an always-online service"

"Even less appealing is the idea of paying a hotel €10 for Wi-Fi access so I can play a bit of Sim City while on the move"

I certainly don't want to see this on a console....

 

[Cyan]

I think you'll find a lot of games are moving in the "online only" direction made recently famous by Sim City. I hope to see offline single-player games as well, but if a developer can rely on always having the cloud available, they'll find ways to integrate it into the game experience, even for single player.
I don't think so. I'd be very surprised if both companies don't go this direction. In which case it comes down to how easy to use and reliable your cloud APIs are. Sony does not have a lot of experience in this area, but their Gaikai purchase indicates they want to get that experience. Wouldn't take much to extend the current Gaikai model to a generic cloud computing infrastructure.

Alas the thing is that online in most games make no sense. Yes, you can add it, but no one is going to play it. And it is expensive....

People just play the online shooters, like BF3, for hours and hours in one sitting, *sadly* leaving little or no time to play other games.

I have like 100+ games on the X360 and I can tell you that I barely play online, and the only games that I fancy to play with others are the games that everyone plays, leaving the online of hundreds of games deserted.

This news from today says that we have less online games nowadays than in the past, and that's the cause.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/51488/eedar-publishers-are-deserting-online-multiplayer-on-xbox-360-and-ps3

"You can see that in 2006, one year into the release of the Xbox 360 and the launch year of the PlayStation 3, 67% of the games had online multiplayer, 58% had offline multiplayer and 28% had no multiplayer," commented Geoffrey Zatkin, EEDAR chief operating officer.

"By 2012, you can see that only 42% have online multiplayer, a drop of 25%, 44% have offline multiplayer, a drop of 14%, and 41% have no multiplayer, a rise of 16%. So, over time, fewer and fewer high definition console games are including multiplayer as part of their core offering."

Dishonored dev says single player games are not dying. Pretty normal, if you ask me.

http://www.shacknews.com/article/78408/single-player-games-not-dying-says-dishonored-dev

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The Beta was too limited and too late to do anything useful about what was discovered.
It's pretty much impossible to simulate real load until you see it.
There is always contention between wanting an extended beta and how that impacts marketing and release timing.
I've said for years that EA doesn't have the patience to do a good MMO.

Even when you have a pretty good idea what a real load will be like (SOE and the same problems with every MMO launch, same for many other veteran MMO developers), it sometimes isn't financially prudent to setup for maximum expected load as the load will tend to fall off after the first few weeks, after which they then have to figure out what to do with all the server hardware and infrastructure. And it becomes even worse if you over-predict how well your online game will sell and end up with massive unused server capacity. So most publishers tend to go conservative on server capacity with plans in place to increase it if load is either far in excess or continues to be strong for greater than 2 weeks without signs of fall off.

Problems like that start to become less of a problem however, if all or most of your games require and make use of always online connectivity. At that point it becomes important to manage title releases to make full use of available server capacity. And growing server capacity and infrastructure then becomes a long term investment rather than a potential long term loss.

Blizzard for example has suffered relatively little with their online game launches due to being able to leverage the massive server farm they have for WoW. Making sure Diablo III and SC2: WOL and HOTS were launched when logins for WoW started to hit rapid decline after the latest expansion, etc. And each WoW expansion as well coming when online play for those games started to hit rapid decline.

Not many publishers have that luxury, however.

Regards,
SB

 

[bkilian]

Alas the thing is that online in most games make no sense. Yes, you can add it, but no one is going to play it. And it is expensive....

People just play the online shooters, like BF3, for hours and hours in one sitting, *sadly* leaving little or no time to play other games.

I have like 100+ games on the X360 and I can tell you that I barely play online, and the only games that I fancy to play with others are the games that everyone plays, leaving the online of hundreds of games deserted.

This news from today says that we have less online games nowadays than in the past, and that's the cause.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/51488/eedar-publishers-are-deserting-online-multiplayer-on-xbox-360-and-ps3
Dishonored dev says single player games are not dying. Pretty normal, if you ask me.

http://www.shacknews.com/article/78408/single-player-games-not-dying-says-dishonored-dev

I'm not talking about multiplayer. I'm talking about leveraging the huge, cost effective compute abilities of the cloud providers to enhance your gameplay, even single player gameplay. For instance, in SimCity, the servers keep track of your whole region, even if you're playing single player. In the upcoming Planetary Annihilation, it looks like even single player games use server calculation for pathfinding etc. These are simple examples, but I could easily see it being used to simulate all the NPCs in skyrim, for instance, allowing the console to concentrate on just making sure the few you're currently talking to are even more realistic. You could even share the NPC simulation among multiple clients, cloning them only when they've actually met the player and had their state changed by him/her, and even then, many players would put an NPC into basically the same state, and that, again could be shared computing.

I'm really interested in seeing how this shakes out in the end, it could phenomenally improve AI and world scope.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

This news from today says that we have less online games nowadays than in the past, and that's the cause.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/51488/eedar-publishers-are-deserting-online-multiplayer-on-xbox-360-and-ps3

Wouldn't a better metric be how many online gamers there are? Or % of consoles that log into the internet? Or amount of time connected? Or anything other than number of online games?

I'd imagine, as people constantly bemoan the state of games and development repeatedly, that there are less overall games. Let alone less overall multiplayer online games.

And, I also agree, online does not necessitate multiplayer.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm not talking about multiplayer. I'm talking about leveraging the huge, cost effective compute abilities of the cloud providers to enhance your gameplay, even single player gameplay. For instance, in SimCity, the servers keep track of your whole region, even if you're playing single player. In the upcoming Planetary Annihilation, it looks like even single player games use server calculation for pathfinding etc. These are simple examples, but I could easily see it being used to simulate all the NPCs in skyrim, for instance, allowing the console to concentrate on just making sure the few you're currently talking to are even more realistic. You could even share the NPC simulation among multiple clients, cloning them only when they've actually met the player and had their state changed by him/her, and even then, many players would put an NPC into basically the same state, and that, again could be shared computing.

I'm really interested in seeing how this shakes out in the end, it could phenomenally improve AI and world scope.

It has other even more interesting implications.

Imagine that NPC dialog could change over time. You could theoretically have in game weather mimick real world weather in your area. Monthly content (quests and mini storylines) seamlessly added to the game (similar to MMORPGs), etc.

The possibilities are endless.

Regards,
SB

 

[3dilettante]

I'm not talking about multiplayer. I'm talking about leveraging the huge, cost effective compute abilities of the cloud providers to enhance your gameplay, even single player gameplay. For instance, in SimCity, the servers keep track of your whole region, even if you're playing single player.

Not to harp on SimCity, but I really don't think that should be looked at as an exemplar of why cloud offload is a good idea.
SimCity's server-side simulation is composed predominantly of simple numeric message passing and mailboxes, with player-generated updates coming at a frequency of 3-20 minutes, with global visibility taking tens of minutes to hours to days, if ever. This does assume that there isn't a hiccup in the data used when it gets to the client or how it is evaluated by the validation server, whereupon it may just roll back hours of your progress or permanently glitch the city.
The vast majority of the regional simulation as the player sees it is actually an array of nearest-neighbor data that the client requests and proceeds to run its own simulation on, not the cloud.
There are just way too many clients relative to the number of servers to think that having them do any simulation work is a net win.

The complexity and latency of this method is the modern-day play by e-mail, except this ISP is allowed to drop and delay emails and decide on its own if your client has played the game the wrong way.

In the upcoming Planetary Annihilation, it looks like even single player games use server calculation for pathfinding etc.

I haven't followed PA, but my impression was that this was a client-server game with a predominantly multiplayer focus. The server wasn't indicated as being in the cloud, but a specific dedicated machine that could also be the same machine as a player client.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Consumer benefit of the cloud still remain to be proven. I seriously doubt the advantages of off loading work to the cloud when it's not uncommon for people to have a ping of 150ms or more. The skeptic in me sees it as a way for companies to launch mostly unfinished product. It's certainly not something I'd put in the + category until proven otherwise.

 

[liolio]

Not going OT but kind of tackling the problem from another angle.
If indeed MSFT applies those policies, Do you think it could affect the way single player games are designed?
I mean if the system is always online I wonder if some games which actions take place in pretty big and complex world (for example AC, ME, but also FPS) could be turned into "solo" MMO if that makes sense.
For example a given amount of player are playing in the same world/instance as you do, and their actions could influence somehow the course of the narrative, somehow it would allow for greater replayability. Actually not the whole game could be affected but there could be like in MMO "instances" were players meets in a PVE manner.
Say at some point in a CoD or BF games there is huge batlle (involving every bit as much players as a MP games) and depending on how the fight goes the outcome is affected (though you want ato design it in a way that you can't fail because of other lacking, you don't get stuck but take some "default branch" in the narrative.
I think about this because I player DC online Universe a bit off late, my first MMO experience, and I realized (as well as speaking with people that play a lot of mmo) that a good portion of MMO can be solo/single player. I wonder if there would be some way here to massively revamp the traction of single/solo playing weirdly by introducing MP type of interaction in the gameplay.

If I think of ME type of games where you have a lot of choice, there could be some "inner time" built into the game. When you have choices, those choices have timelines, when a mission reaches its time line the game/server will either randomly choose the outcome of that mission or use the result of another player which happened to play it at the same time.
IN ME the editor stated that actually +60% of the players played good characters (usually I do), so I wonder if it could be a good idea to "break" the sometime "idiotic" choice you have in dialogue (wrt good or bad) and let the narrative being affected by external events (randomness or other people playing). The games would be designed as branches, and so drastically increasing the replay value (at the cost of quiet possibly how long it takes to "finish" the game as you can't be a completists under those circumstances). Server side could keep track of the path you took and somehow bias thing so you don't go multiple times through the exact same curse of events.
They could implement more "massive battles", replacing NPC by players.

(I don't speak about sand box games which seems even better matches for "mmo enhanced" type of single player experience. DCUO is kind of already there eventhough the world is a too dead/empty).

Note to my-self and the mods, that was not my purpose but as I was writing I realized that actually the post is not "xbox" specific, more of possible consequence or possibility of an always connected not even console but games. Clearly not my purpose in the first place.

I don't know if others people find that topic interesting (let see if there are responses to my post) may be we could consider open a spin off thread like "could solo oriented MMO be, weirdly enough, the future of single player games?" which is kind of parallel to the fact that next gen games could more than often require an always on connection.
Another taste "in which way an always connected game/system (to make it not xbox or ps specific) could affect (/improve) "single player" game designs".