Server based game augmentations. The transition to cloud. Really possible?

[Nesh]

In a game like Forza 5, you could use the cloud e.g. for managing and hosting global racing events...or even global racing leagues, where people all over the world can participate at tournaments.

I believe that can be done now

That could very well be and makes more sense to me for the beginning of the service. We even have the game galactic reign that exactly does this.

I think that cloud services will start slowly with the 'obvious' services first, but as time and tec development goes on, it eventually takes off during X1 lifetime...similar to the SPUs in the, which are kind of PS3's local mini cloud

Just curious, the developers who will use MS's cloud, will be paying MS for renting cloud "space"?

 

[Cjail]

Presumably I guess the ideal is MS goes to third parties and says "here's some computing resources in the cloud if you want, all free, have fun!"

Wishful thinking

I guess the vague theory would be something like MS has all these Azure servers anyway, that may not be getting full utilization.

If they don't' use them in full then they are wasting them.

Cloud computing should be very efficient though, just simply because only a small percent of console owners are actually playing at any given time.
If you only had virtual consoles in the cloud, you'd need much less available compute resources to serve all the 360 players actually playing at any given time, than there are X360's in the world for example.

But you'd have to have the ability to scale to some peak usage (EG COD 6 just came out, it's prime time saturday evening), too. That peak still much lower overall though.

I guess the key would be finding something useful for those servers to do if not playing Xbox. It would have to be non critical stuff, since they'd have to be "available" on a instants notice.

If the service is used by a small percentage of players then MS won't dedicate special attention to it nor dedicate more resources/servers per user because those few users won't be able to cover the costs.
No really MS is in the gaming business to make money not lose it.

 

[Rangers]

I am exactly wondering about the argument that only a small percentage of X1 users actually play at the same time. If devs go for features that are 24/7 like persistent worlds...the above argument is a bit difficult, so I guess that in such a case you have to pay more.

I am not sure how this translates to cloud computing, but in HPC, computing time is very very expensive...

Should not be more expensive than any other form of computing, if not less so. It's in essence "bulk computing" and as with anything, volume scales. The same reason your local car dealer can offer such crazy deals

There's probably plenty of scale you can get out of it too. you dont need to provide a million power cables and AV cables and Kinect's and controllers and stuff like that you'd need to duplicate a million times for a million Xbones. You are providing one narrow thing: number crunching.

 

[Billy Idol]

I believe that can be done now

Just curious, the developers who will use MS's cloud, will be paying MS for renting cloud "space"?

This is exactly what I am curious myself: either MS, the publisher/dev or the user/gamer has to pay for the cloud resources.

 

[Rangers]

This is exactly what I am curious myself: either MS, the publisher/dev or the user/gamer has to pay for the cloud resources.

It could be surprisingly low cost though.

And like I said, I guess the vague theory is "azure". Sure it is not free, but if there are servers built but not used currently, it's closer (besides electricity I guess)...

 

[Pugger]

This is exactly what I am curious myself: either MS, the publisher/dev or the user/gamer has to pay for the cloud resources.

I think many developers are asking the said same question.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Did you read my post for you on TXB on the issue? If not, I recommend it. I know what DF said about bandwidth, but as I pointed out the first several thousand words on the issue were totally misleading in the context of MS's plans as they dealt with concerns about game streaming

No it doesn't. It doesn't touch on game streaming at all, except as a reference to bandwidth concerns.

The data being sent would already be extremely small in the first place most likely. We aren't talking about HD textures or huge batches of geometry most likely.

Right. And the article explains this, saying the data sets have to be small because there's no enough BW to do otherwise, and that's how tasks that can be done in the cloud are limited.

That is THE point with the cloud. That is the mechanism by which MS contends the local box becomes effectively more powerful over time as devs get more progressive in utilizing those remote resources. And DF didn't even really touch on that.

And the article attempts to identify what those low-latency jobs are. If there are plenty more low-latency jobs you can think of, please suggest them here! That's what this thread is for.

 

[-tkf-]

The most clear indication of damage control in regards to the PS4/XBOX1 power difference comes from the total lack of mentioning of cloud computing in the leaks.

But who cares, we now how the most powerful innovative software company throwing millions into the development of cloud based game rendering. It doesn't take a technical genius to understand that it will be a very special kind of games that can use cloud computing for anything. And almost everything else will at most be fluff or added effects. It's just not a feasible solution when we discuss traditionel games, speed and power is EVERYTHING in games. Just having one those is almost useless.

And i have a hard time seeing the difference between "cloud" and simple online "servers" in some of the examples that have been brought forward. We have constant online games with Diablo 2, World of Warcraft with up to 11 millions players. All of that is nothing new, and for larger persistent universes there is Eve Online for example.

Maybe Microsoft can introduce a brand new kind of game into the world that actually requires Cloud power. But so far i am very sceptical but very happy that the elephant is throwing its weight into something new that could introduce new games. But for traditional games it's just damage control.

 

[Nesh]

I think many developers are asking the said same question.

And then there is the question: If its cheaper for devs to have their own servers whats there left for XBone? Or if its viable to also use their own to cover multiplatform needs?
On the other hand since we are talking about 300k MS servers there are economies of scale in action, assuming of course that enough clients are renting them. If MS's infrastructure offers superior and exclusive possibilities, then they ve got the cloud based augmentations all for their selves

 

[Cjail]

It could be surprisingly low cost though.

How can keeping 300k servers up and running 24/7 be low costs?

 

[Pugger]

The most clear indication of damage control in regards to the PS4/XBOX1 power difference comes from the total lack of mentioning of cloud computing in the leaks.

But who cares, we now how the most powerful innovative software company throwing millions into the development of cloud based game rendering. It doesn't take a technical genius to understand that it will be a very special kind of games that can use cloud computing for anything. And almost everything else will at most be fluff or added effects. It's just not a feasible solution when we discuss traditionel games, speed and power is EVERYTHING in games. Just having one those is almost useless.

And i have a hard time seeing the difference between "cloud" and simple online "servers" in some of the examples that have been brought forward. We have constant online games with Diablo 2, World of Warcraft with up to 11 millions players. All of that is nothing new, and for larger persistent universes there is Eve Online for example.

Maybe Microsoft can introduce a brand new kind of game into the world that actually requires Cloud power. But so far i am very sceptical but very happy that the elephant is throwing its weight into something new that could introduce new games. But for traditional games it's just damage control.

I assume MS has many an idea as to what they want from Cloud, what they deliver will be interesting but as Bilikan pointed out theres a world of difference from proof of concept to real world applications. Saying that if I was working in the marketing dept' for Xbox one I would also be pushing "powered by cloud" heavily, its a great buzz word.

 

[Davros]

If ms do a lot of game processing "in the cloud" you have to ask yourself how long will they fund the servers ?

 

[Arwin]

How can keeping 300k servers up and running 24/7 be low costs?

The whole 300k server number is just marketing talk for saying they've hooked it up to the Azure backend, which Microsoft has available for hosting a large variety of global cloud services I'm sure? I know some large global companies use it for their central database storage and such.

 

[Cjail]

^^^
Ok but regularly we see this or that company shutting downs the serves for games that are not popular which tells me that the cost are not that low for a server.


Edit

Sorry mods if talking about cost is not exactly the topic of this thread but IMO they are a part of the equation, and a fundamental part because IMO the "future" of this tech IMO will first and foremost be decided by its profitability.
MS might have build a fantastic service as fans hope but still if it's underused and expensive for everyone it will not succeed.

 

[Pugger]

^^^
Ok but regularly we see this or that company shutting downs the serves for games that are not popular which tells me that the cost are not that low for a server.


Edit

Sorry mods if talking about cost is not exactly the topic of this thread but IMO they are a part of the equation, and a fundamental part because IMO the "future" of this tech IMO will first and foremost be decided by its profitability.
MS might have build a fantastic service as fans hope and but still if it's underused and expensive for everyone it will not succeed.

Well if a game is not popular and is not being utilised it makes perfect sense to offload the resources elsewhere, MS will not shut down the game, they will just redistribute cloud resources as necessary.

 

[dumbo11]

Well if a game is not popular and is not being utilised it makes perfect sense to offload the resources elsewhere, MS will not shut down the game, they will just redistribute cloud resources as necessary.

The cloud automatically reallocates resources, that's kindof the entire point - transparent, automatic scaling. So, yes .

---

Looking around the web, Azure had 'high tens of thousands' of servers in May 2012... it seems entirely reasonable that 300,000 is the total number of servers that are expected to be in the Azure network at the xbox one launch date.

 

[-tkf-]

If ms do a lot of game processing "in the cloud" you have to ask yourself how long will they fund the servers ?

Pure cloud based games will hang on the same deal as Diablo 3, WOW and other online only games. But if it's just used to enhance the game graphics the game could in principle still work offline. However considering that everything points to the ONE being a Activation Server bound game service it doesn't really make a difference compared to every other game on the platform.

But this will be the case for every other cloud based service, how long do we keep the servers alive. Then again, considering how many servers for example google runs, lets say a million, the storage needed to store a game would be tiny. So in a sense a Cloud based gaming service could in principle run forever and allow access to the games, forever and ever as long the internet is here. Beating every other media in durability.

Want to play a 20 year old game, no problem, we will just pull it from our veryfarfromnearline storage and run it.

 

[patsu]

I think many developers are asking the said same question.

Eh ? By this time, basic questions like this should already been addressed. Unless the cloud is only used by the first parties today.

 

[Scott_Arm]

CTO of Avalanche Studios, Linus Blomberg, doesn't seem to think cloud processing is a joke. Sounds like more persistent world stuff, on a greater scale than what they've been able to do before. It'll be really interesting to see how it works out. No hints to the financial side of things. I have a feeling it'll be a split between Xbox Live fees and publishers/devs. Use Live fees to subsidize prices for publishers to move their dedicated servers and back-ends onto Azure. Wouldn't surprise me if you saw games on PS4 that had dedicated servers running on Azure, as well as whatever back-end they have for the web where you can log in and see stats etc.

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/j...antage_over_ps4_says_avalanche_tech_lead.html

 

[expletive]

CTO of Avalanche Studios, Linus Blomberg, doesn't seem to think cloud processing is a joke. Sounds like more persistent world stuff, on a greater scale than what they've been able to do before. It'll be really interesting to see how it works out. No hints to the financial side of things. I have a feeling it'll be a split between Xbox Live fees and publishers/devs. Use Live fees to subsidize prices for publishers to move their dedicated servers and back-ends onto Azure. Wouldn't surprise me if you saw games on PS4 that had dedicated servers running on Azure, as well as whatever back-end they have for the web where you can log in and see stats etc.

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/j...antage_over_ps4_says_avalanche_tech_lead.html

If Microsoft is claiming their investment in Live/Azure as a competitive advantage, would/could they prevent competitors platforms from using it? Charge different rates for Xbox1/Windows compared to competing platforms?