Xbox One: Cloud Will Quadruple the Power, Says Microsoft 400
New submitter geirlk writes "Toms Hardware reports that 'Group program manager of Xbox Incubation & Prototyping Jeff Henshaw recently told OXM that for every console Microsoft builds, it will provision the CPU and storage equivalent of three Xbox One consoles in the cloud. This allows developers to assume that there's roughly three times the resources immediately available to their game. Thus, developers can build bigger, persistent levels that are more inclusive for players.'"
Simcity all over again (Score:5, Interesting)
So we can assume that Xbox One games will be always-online and have server side processing ala Simcity 5... because that worked out so well for EA.
Server downtime (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds amazing! I can't wait for all the articles about hammered servers on release and server maintenance.
they don’t necessarily have to be updated ev (Score:5, Interesting)
the part i found interesting was:
"Those things often involve some complicated up-front calculations when you enter that world, but they don’t necessarily have to be updated every frame."
so i suppose technically, instead of your xbox pre-calculating a lot of this stuff, its offloaded. it could be done intelligently too - so increase the quality and if your offline and your xbox needs to do the calculations - then they're done at a lower priority with less precision?
the fact that its calculations which dont need updated each frame means latency shouldnt be as much of an issue. we aint streaming live game feeds here...
World of Warcraft (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sorry kid (Score:2, Interesting)
The EA debacle with Sim City had everything to do with their activation and matchmaking servers being unable to handle the load. It was very poor planning on the part of EA.
The cloud computing that MS is talking about with the XBox One occurs once you are already in-game and is an offloading of certain resource computations which the local unit *can* do itself. But if there is a good internet connection available then the offload of certain tasks to 'cloud' computing will augment the game by freeing up local resources for other processes. There have been a few decent articles about where and when this cloud computing could be used and be useful, such as moving a player from location to location in a world and calculating dynamic positions for npc's or world economy, etc. Any immediate graphics related computing will still be local and not cause lag from waiting on the cloud.
Cloud Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
EA claimed that Simcity needed extra processing power to run. A guy hacked his game and it worked fine offline.
WTF would a company use a expensive server for 3x the processing power of a middle level PC just for a $60-80 game?
- Former Simcity fan and soon to be former Halo fanboy.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does this actually work? (Score:5, Interesting)
As Jim Sterling points out MSFT is pretty much giving the finger to everybody that doesn't have 1.-A ton of money and 2.- Incredible broadband,
I have a ton of money and incredible broadband, and I still think that Microsoft is giving me the finger with the Xbox One.
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Interesting)
Always on. And what happens when you have a shit internet connection?
Exactly this. This whole approach is aimed at the elite (like me) who have an excellent connection and little concern about bandwidth usage. What the gaming industry is failing to take into account is that a large part of their target market is the working poor.
Someone else in this item brought up World of Warcraft and SimCity as examples of client-server games (Diablo III is another example of a single user game that should never have had a server). We all know how well the Diablo launch and SimCity launches went. Even WoW fails in certain circumstances. (I can't tell you how many times I've had WoW raids fail because the redneck tanking in Texas drops carrier. I don't know who the ISPs are in San Antonio, but it seems that even the mildest thunderstorm takes them out.)
Leaving games unplayable because of poor infrastructure or outages is not going to make people happy, we have tons of examples in the past. Why Microsoft thinks they're going to have a different experience with this is beyond me.
I think that eventually this kind of architecture will have enormous potential, but I don't see that we have the market penetration of sufficient high-quality, high-bandwidth networking.
They will NEED all that power, (Score:3, Interesting)
To maintain your household under constant marketing surveillance. I'm waiting for Bruce Schneier to weigh in on this one, specifically. He does an excellent examination of the general case in his recent "Surveillance and the Internet of Things" [schneier.com]
Microsoft is taking Xbox further down the road of current trends in targeting and profiling "users". The model for most web applications and nearly all mobile apps has been that of of the Trojan Horse. An apparently benign, amusing or useful set of functions is presented the user, often below the cost of producing the technology. It does no good to labour the point with tedious argument: the applications are invasive and - depending on your perspective - abusive of privacy.
XBox One is the adaptation of these trends, delivered into the home as a 7/24 data collection head, with a colour camera and a microphone that can't be turned off.
"German federal commissioner for privacy protection: "Xbox One is a surveillance device" [xbox.com]
Civil Liberties Australia says Xbox One 'meets definition of surveillance device' [n4g.com]
Privacy breach: Xbox One a 'twisted nightmare' [ninemsn.com.au]
Re:I call bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Alternately, Microsoft may be intending to do something along the lines of OnLive; that is, render the game on the server (with it's "4-times-the-power-of-a-single-XBoxOne" servers) and then stream the output to the player.
Of course, you still have tremendous latency issues, unless you stick those servers in every ISP across the country (something Microsoft could afford far better than OnLive). With the increased CPU power of the new console, the stream could better compressed, resulting in better picture quality as well.
There are a number of advantages to this for both Microsoft and the developers. Games would no longer be limited by the hardware of the console, for instance, which would not only mean better graphics and larger worlds, but longer life expectancies for the consoles since its hardware doesn't need to be replaced as often (who needs faster GPUs and bigger HDDs when everything is "in the Cloud"?)\. Microsoft can keep selling the same basic model for years, with only minor tweaks and chrome, negating the need for expensive R&D. Publishers get better control of their products; it kills used game sales, they can obsolete older games to create a market for the newer versions, and they can data-mine the players. Plus, Microsoft gets paid for running the servers!
For the customer, there are fewer advantages, of course. But what corporation really cares about what the customers want these days?
Re:Does this actually work? (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't fix his problem ; it's usually an overloaded local router. I got to the point where mine was giving out 150ms pings just for one hop - it didn't have enough CPU and RAM to deal with the all the connections being thrown around by torrent-seeding media sharers.
Broadband is all set up for consumption - downloading your content like a good little consumer. It's not set up for everyone being a server of dozens of connections.