Support NeoGAF

[ElTorro]

Unless you have access to Microsoft's books, or knowledge about how they intend to offer such utility to other developers, your speculation is just that, speculation... If MS didn't see this as economically feasible, then they wouldn't have invested in all of the tech to make it work... That said, they do already own the infrastructure, and it is already running, might at well use that capacity.

This might give you a hint. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/

Why is any of this any of your concern? Are you paying for the servers?

I was making an argument about the feasibility of such things for game developers. Talking about the costs of running servers is relevant to that argument.

Again more ass figures... In what shared world scenario does your computational output vary by the number of users? In a typical shared world game, regardless of how many people are in a session, the visual output his limited by the hardware of A single user... What this is doing is taking the physics load off of local machine.. The number of users in the session is irrelevant.

You missed the particular point I was making here. Here, I wasn't talking about technical properties, but about the impact of that "20x" as a marketing talking point. Your reading comprehension is really inadequate, and your "ass" counter-arguments rather unproductive. You may try again, but I guess it won't be worth the effort.

 

[Rembrandt]

They don't have to. People saying Microsoft were fooling us with PR or bullshit is still accurate based on what they promised, compared to what we're seeing or have seen so far today. Requiring people to specifically mention the 10x figure or whatever else, is just semantics.

Saying something doesn't exist and is just PR vs saying "It exists, but I don't know if it's 10x stronger" are two completely different things.

Did MS ever actually promise improvements (let alone 10x improvement) to graphics? I know people may have implied it (based on less-than-clear wording from MS), but I'm genuinely curious if that was actually ever promised/discussed.

kinda?

though that could mean if devs used the cloud, they could offload resources allowing them to improve the graphics, but idk.

Brought the headache on yourself mates.

could've left well enough alone, but we had go bumping 3 month old threads just the get a quick "lol I told you so" in.

just bumping the thread with new info.

 

[Pathfinder]

Did MS ever actually promise improvements (let alone 10x improvement) to graphics? I know people may have implied it (based on less-than-clear wording from MS), but I'm genuinely curious if that was actually ever promised/discussed.

I always took it to mean the power of the cloud would do things like improve physics calculations by offloading it from the local console's CPU/GPU.

I never once took what they said to mean it would somehow make the console itself more powerful.

 

[jailbird20022]

Brought the headache on yourself mates.

could've left well enough alone, but we had go bumping 3 month old threads just the get a quick "lol I told you so" in.

 

[Hockeymac18]

Saying something doesn't exist and is just PR vs saying "It exists, but I don't know if it's 10x stronger" are two completely different things.




kinda?

though that could mean if devs used the cloud, they could offload resources allowing them to improve the graphics, but idk.

Banned site, can't see it.

 

[nib95]

Did MS ever actually promise improvements (let alone 10x improvement) to graphics? I know people may have implied it (based on less-than-clear wording from MS), but I'm genuinely curious if that was actually ever promised/discussed.

They did. Or at least members of their tech team did. So far we've had numerous figures from Microsoft, including 3x, 4x, 10x and 20x the performance boost. With improvements to things like lighting, physics modelling, fluid dynamics, cloth motion, AI etc.

 

[Rembrandt]

Banned site, can't see it.

just noticed it was dualshockers, lol.

http://gamingbolt.com/xbox-ones-clo...r-lighting-better-physics#hmk7TTUfjYC8zUdA.99

It was a Phil Harrison quote.

 

[leeh]

They did. Or at least members of their tech team did. So far we've had numerous figures from Microsoft, including 3x, 4x, 10x and 20x the performance boost. With improvements to things like lighting, physics modelling, fluid dynamics, cloth motion, AI etc.

Don't think they ever said lighting. It's anything which is tailored to CPU and which wouldn't be effected by latency. Those what you said are good examples, you just need developers to get on board.

Last thing I heard is that the Cloudgine tech was being incorporated into UE, and if so and with the right pricing and tools, you could see this being used more if this works out.

 

[Hockeymac18]

They did. Or at least members of their tech team did. So far we've had numerous figures from Microsoft, including 3x, 4x, 10x and 20x the performance boost. With improvements to things like lighting, physics modelling, fluid dynamics, cloth motion, AI etc.

I'm not trying to poke the bear or call you a liar, I'm just curious if there is any documentation of them actually saying "will improve graphics x amount". Either from a website or from a MS rep interview. Also, I seem to remember around the reveal that 3-4 times an XB1 was the number they were using a lot (I think it meant that they'd have 3-4 times XB1's CPU compute power available in Azure).

The 20x thing is from today, and they're not actually saying it'll improve it 20x times (at least that's not how I interpreted it to mean).

just noticed it was dualshockers, lol.

http://gamingbolt.com/xbox-ones-clo...r-lighting-better-physics#hmk7TTUfjYC8zUdA.99

It was a Phil Harrison quote.

From the article:

“It’s also about cloud processing and AI. This is where some of the computational effort of a game can be offloaded to the dedicated CPUs on the cloud, to make your game experience even better, better graphics, better lighting, better physics. This is an example of where we think the the cloud is going to push the next generation of game development in new and creative ways, that will make the experience even more better.”
Read more at http://gamingbolt.com/xbox-ones-clo...r-lighting-better-physics#MIiv35CLF0hk5lKt.99

I see how his wording could be confusing, but I clearly interpret that to mean that you can offload CPU processing for things like AI to the cloud, which would then free up local resources for other things (such as graphics). I don't think what he's saying is a lie, either, since that offloading (which is already happening with games on XB1) does help reduce load for certain tasks. And then the freed up resources can then be spent on other things....seems pretty straightforward.

Of course, I have no idea how much it actually helps since you'd actually need to see two versions of a game to verify these claims (and who would build two games just to make that point??). The only thing I can think of where they demoed "local" vs "cloud" was the Build demo (early Crackdown) and some asteroid demo back from the early XB1 days (may have been from around E3 2013?) where they showed hundreds of asteroids being modeled (local) vs. thousands (cloud)...but I can't remember the exact details of that demo.

 

[iMax]

They did. Or at least members of their tech team did. So far we've had numerous figures from Microsoft, including 3x, 4x, 10x and 20x the performance boost. With improvements to things like lighting, physics modelling, fluid dynamics, cloth motion, AI etc.

Well that's kinda obvious. If the console has fewer local calculations to make, that means the computational overhead is effectively reduced allowing developers to capitalise on more resources.

 

[adelante]

Microsoft used Cloud computing/data logging for a few games now. Eg AI with Titanfall (even though the AI is terrible), Drivatars with Forza, now destruction with Crackdown. I don't think it was ever really a question of whether cloud computing was real in any capacity, as it was already being used in games before Microsoft even boasted about it or these consoles were even out (Eg in certain MMO's, mobile games etc). I think the bigger point was or is whether it has actually offered this 10x to 20x performance increase Microsoft was boasting (with improvements to graphics, lighting, AI, physics etc), which based on the evidence, does not seem to be the case. Not really sure if what we're seeing in Crackdown could be done at a local level, but based on games from previous generations, I don't see why not, but it's impossible for us to know. The hardware is much more powerful after all. So far the use of Cloud compute has been gimmicky at best, more so considering how much Microsoft pushed and promoted it. I suppose Crackdown could change that. The jury is still out, but so far the proof is not in the pudding.

They've definitely toned down the complexity of physics and sheer number of particles in a big way compared to their initial cloud destruction demo though.

I would argue that it is. I don't think the cloud is that big a game changer but I doubt the destructibility seen in Crackdown would've been possible on the XboxOne, assuming that these types of effects are typically computationally heavy on the CPU and that the XboxOne's CPU doesn't seem like a large leap over 360's. The gifs that you and others have posted of Red Faction shows huge chunks of buildings clipping or sinking into the ground as they collapse as opposed to them physically interacting with one another here in Crackdown, and not just for a single building, mind you. (And the original cloud demo has a single building being destroyed whereas there's several here so I would also argue that the destruction complexity is similar and been spread proportionately across multiple assets)

 

[m@cross]

Did MS ever actually promise improvements (let alone 10x improvement) to graphics? I know people may have implied it (based on less-than-clear wording from MS), but I'm genuinely curious if that was actually ever promised/discussed.

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/0...mprove-performance-thanks-to-cloud-computing/

It was hyped to hell in a lot of places

According to Jeff Henshaw, group program manager of Xbox Incubation & Prototyping, the Xbox One will be even more powerful by cloud support, effectively, an Xbox One, will become an “Xbox Three.” For every Xbox One available in your living room, we will have three of those same devices on the cloud, said Microsoft.
“We’re provisioning for developers for every physical Xbox One we build, we’re provisioning the CPU and storage equivalent of three Xbox Ones on the cloud,” he said. “We’re doing that flat out so that any game developer can assume that there are roughly three times the resources immediately available to their game, so they can build bigger, persistent levels that are more inclusive for players. They can do that out of the gate.”

“If you look to the cloud as something that is no doubt going to evolve and grow over time, it really spells out that there’s no limit to where the processing power of Xbox One can go.

 

[Pathfinder]

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/0...mprove-performance-thanks-to-cloud-computing/

It was hyped to hell in a lot of places

What I'm reading there is cloud computing will free up resources on Xbox One that can be used for other things by developers.

Which it most certainly does.

 

[Hockeymac18]

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/0...mprove-performance-thanks-to-cloud-computing/

It was hyped to hell in a lot of places

I still don't see an exact call out to "graphics being improved 3x", but I agree that their wording there was a little misleading.

 

[Firmus_Anguis]

Did MS ever actually promise improvements (let alone 10x improvement) to graphics? I know people may have implied it (based on less-than-clear wording from MS), but I'm genuinely curious if that was actually ever promised/discussed.

I don't know about ten times (I thought so too), but they've definitely been quoted indicating at least four times the computational power with the help of the cloud.

Here's an article on the issue
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-in-theory-can-xbox-one-cloud-transform-gaming

Edit: Damn it, beaten.

 

[m@cross]

I still don't see an exact call out to "graphics being improved 3x", but I agree that their wording there was a little misleading.

Seems to be mixed terms being confused and propagated. 10x was used in the article I quoted, but not in the way people think.

“It’s also been stated that the Xbox One is ten times more powerful than the Xbox 360, so we’re effectively 40 times greater than the Xbox 360 in terms of processing capabilities [using the cloud],” added Xbox Australia rep Adam Pollington.

Phil had to backtrack on it as well, so they new it had legs and needed to stop it.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/06/18/xbo...l-than-xbox-360-more-with-cloud-says-spencer/

 

[Synth]

Phil had to backtrack on it as well, so they new it had legs and needed to stop it.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/06/18/xbo...l-than-xbox-360-more-with-cloud-says-spencer/

I may be misreading this.. but that seems to be him saying that 3x was lowballing it.

 

[Rembrandt]

Seems to be mixed terms being confused and propagated. 10x was used in the article I quoted, but not in the way people think.



Phil had to backtrack on it as well, so they new it had legs and needed to stop it.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/06/18/xbo...l-than-xbox-360-more-with-cloud-says-spencer/

for convenience.

I may be misreading this.. but that seems to be him saying that 3x was lowballing it.

yeah, seems like he said too low of a number actually. it's 10x stronger + the cloud variable.

 

[Trup1aya]

So you two honestly believe there's a chance that game will launch with no use of the cloud? The one feature they've been touting in the one game co-developed by a company that specializes in cloud computing?

and why "supposedly?" they're playing it live at xbox fan fest.

really?

Just forget it bruh, the game will launch, with cloud features intact, and folks will still be denying it... They'll say shit like, 'I've destroyed some buildings in games before, this is nothing new'.... Meanwhile, fans will be enjoying a game that pushes the boundaries of physics computations in games, and likely gets other developers thinking about how they can use the cloud to push the boundaries of computation in different ways...

 

[Switzer]

Cloud computing isn't some magical technology that will run faster than anything we have now, it is simply a different model of server architecture. It doesn't make servers magically faster, but I does allow server resources to scale more effectively. In other words, it doesn't allow us to do anything we can't already do now, it's just a more robust means of doing so.

Also, the idea of "offloading" processing to the cloud is, with current technology, laughably stupid. It's not inherently a bad idea, but nobody has yet managed to make it work as far as I am aware, or at least make it work faster than just spinning off a thread locally. It also has nothing to do with where the processing is offloaded to, a cloud server or a regular server makes no difference.

 

[Trup1aya]

This might give you a hint. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/



I was making an argument about the feasibility of such things for game developers. Talking about the costs of running servers is relevant to that argument.



You missed the particular point I was making here. Here, I wasn't talking about technical properties, but about the impact of that "20x" as a marketing talking point. Your reading comprehension is really inadequate, and your "ass" counter-arguments rather unproductive. You may try again, but I guess it won't be worth the effort.

Your invalidating the 20x claim, and the source of your skeptism is 10seconds of destruction that clearly isn't possible on a single Xbox... You have no idea how much computation power it would take to render the scene we saw+ account for other outlandish things that could occur simultaneously + run the rest of the game smoothly... MS says they need 20x what the xb1 can do locally, and you have absolutely nothing of substance to counter that claim...

As far as economic feasibility, you also have nothing. You don't know what types of arrangements Microsoft is willing to make with game developers. the price calculator is for enterprise users... Why do you think it applies here? You don't how much of the implementation will come down to middleware provided by MS or cloudgine. You are assuming this will be prohibitively expensive, but have absolutely no idea how MS's utilization of their existing infrastructure reduces the cost barrier... In fact you are choosing to ignore it altogether.

 

[Ryouji Gunblade]

Sony made it rain.

 

[Pathfinder]

Also, the idea of "offloading" processing to the cloud is, with current technology, laughably stupid. It's not inherently a bad idea, but nobody has yet managed to make it work as far as I am aware, or at least make it work faster than just spinning off a thread locally. It also has nothing to do with where the processing is offloaded to, a cloud server or a regular server makes no difference.

Keep in mind these aren't exactly Core i7's that are in our consoles. Offloading complicated computations makes perfect sense given current conditions.

 

[Ricky_R]

Those in denial about what was shown today are just as bad as this desperate bump.

Regardless of how considerable the boost is and it being only for online, it's still there and I doubt the final game will feature something that much different.

However, "The Power of the Cloud" has definitely been a marketing gimmick. They tried to mislead people with it until they realized they weren't fooling anyone. That doesn't mean that it won't serve a purpose though, just not the one initially suggested.

 

[ElTorro]

As far as economic feasibility, you also have nothing. You don't know what types of arrangements Microsoft is willing to make with game developers. the price calculator is for enterprise users... Why do you think it applies here? You don't how much of the implementation will come down to middleware provided by MS or cloudgine. You are assuming this will be prohibitively expensive, but have absolutely no idea how MS's utilization of their existing infrastructure reduces the cost barrier... In fact you are choosing to ignore it altogether.

So your only argument is that I have supposedly no information nor experience in the matter—I do, by the way. In fact, I published two books on the matter—, hence the opposite is true? What do you think makes Thunderhead different from Azure?

 

[Rembrandt]

Just forget it bruh, the game will launch, with cloud features intact, and folks will still be denying it... They'll say shit like, 'I've destroyed some buildings in games before, this is nothing new'.... Meanwhile, fans will be enjoying a game that pushes the boundaries of physics computations in games, and likely gets other developers thinking about how they can use the cloud to push the boundaries of computation in different ways...

people still won't believe even once the game launches, lmao.

Cloud computing isn't some magical technology that will run faster than anything we have now, it is simply a different model of server architecture. It doesn't make servers magically faster, but I does allow server resources to scale more effectively. In other words, it doesn't allow us to do anything we can't already do now, it's just a more robust means of doing so.

Also, the idea of "offloading" processing to the cloud is, with current technology, laughably stupid. It's not inherently a bad idea, but nobody has yet managed to make it work as far as I am aware, or at least make it work faster than just spinning off a thread locally. It also has nothing to do with where the processing is offloaded to, a cloud server or a regular server makes no difference.

Is Crackdown possible locally?

Those in denial about what was shown today are just as bad as this desperate bump.

Regardless of how considerable the boost is and it being only for online, it's still there and I doubt the final game will feature something that much different.

However, "The Power of the Cloud" has definitely been a marketing gimmick. They tried to mislead people with it until they realized they weren't fooling anyone. That doesn't mean that it won't serve a purpose though, just not the one initially suggested.

If something that wasn't possible before is now possible thanks to "the power of the cloud," was Microsoft wrong?

 

[Ricky_R]

people still won't believe even once the game launches, lmao.



Is Crackdown possible locally?



If something that wasn't possible before is now possible thanks to "the power of the cloud," was Microsoft wrong?

I wouldn't say it wasn't possible, just that it definitely helps them achieve what they want (In this case destructable environments in multiplayer) without much sacrifices.

Still, their narrative was quite different back when they were screaming "Power of the Cloud" to the heavens.

 

[bigdaddygamebot]

In the early day MS emphasized the cloud as something that could improve the gaming experience. It seems like this has yet to manifest itself.

Has MS given up on this approach or is it being used but not being talked about?

Like everything else when they launched the One...they were almost entirely full of shit.

 

[Rembrandt]

I wouldn't say it wasn't possible, just that it definitely helps them achieve what they want (In this case destructable environments in multiplayer) without much sacrifices.

Still, their narrative was quite different back when they were screaming "Power of the Cloud" to the heavens.

i don't remember the quotes too well, but the cloud is obviously helping this game achieve things it couldn't do without it.

Like everything else when they launched the BOne...they were almost entirely full of shit.

but crackdown

 

[Trup1aya]

So your only argument is that I have supposedly no information nor experience in the matter—I do, by the way. In fact, I published two books on the matter—, hence the opposite is true? What do you think makes Thunderhead different from Azure?

You published two books of MS' cloud pricing as it pertains to gaming...

You've published two books on cloudgine's tech?

You've published two books on the development of Crackdown 3, and the requirements to run it?

No? I didn't think so...

From a technical standpoint, there are likely no difference between Thunderhead and Azure... But the business model to operate the former obviously differs from how they operate Azure on the whole. How can you seriously think that you'd have better insight on what is economically feasible with regards to how MS chooses to utilize their infrastructure than MS itself?... I mean, you have literally no idea how they plan to offset the costs... They could be planning to use the service as a loss leader, hoping the innovation drives more consumers to use their other products and services... Hell, for all you know, they are saving money because they find a use for unused capacity... If your going to speculate, at least assume that somebody at this company ran some numbers before they embarked on this endeavor.

 

[Sakujou]

unfortunately most consumers never gave ms a chance. even worse, most of the journalists already decided that its crap and ms tries to fool their customers. there was a concept, but it was never utilized but yet judged that it will fail and consumers will refuse it.

sad to see, that journalists are responsible how ms failed to a certain degree.

It is impossible to render realtime graphics on the cloud with low latency due to... uhm, physics. However, the cloud could be useful to mmo and other online games in the future when we start seeing more complex AI.

the funny thing is, ps now do work similiar. we already are able to stream games, why is the concept of ms destined to fail? they never had the chance to try.

so ms isnt allowed to use "futurespeak"?

 

[ElTorro]

You published two books of MS' cloud pricing as it pertains to gaming...

You've published two books on cloudgine's tech?

You've published two books on the development of Crackdown 3, and the requirements to run it?

No? I didn't think so...

Again: What do you think is the difference between Thunderhead and Azure from an infrastructure, software architecture, and business model perspective? What is your argument that running Thunderhead for game developers produces substantially lower costs than any other IaaS/PaaS use case? What do you think is Microsoft's running cost per server container or data center? What are the service maintenance costs? Why should they differ from any other use case? Any substantial opinion on that, or am I just talking "ass" because you say that I do?

 

[RexNovis]

Oh lord are we really back to "the power of the cloud" crap again? People are shouting out like it has been proven based off an incredibly early and rough looking demo at a conference in an optimal and heavily controlled environment. This tech has way too many variables to be taking this demo as gospel guys. Please just stop with this nonsense.

 

[Pathfinder]

Oh lord are we really back to "the power of the cloud" crap again? People are shouting out like it has been proven based off an incredibly early and rough looking demo at a conference in an optimal and heavily controlled environment. This tech has way too many variables to be taking this demo as gospel guys. Please just stop with this nonsense.

Some people will never be satisfied.

It's always going to be something else.

 

[gdt]

I still don't believe.

 

[iMax]

Some people will never be satisfied.

It's always going to be something else.

I think at this point we'll just have to wait until the game goes gold. Some people are just incapable of foresight.

 

[Rembrandt]

Oh lord are we really back to "the power of the cloud" crap again? People are shouting out like it has been proven based off an incredibly early and rough looking demo at a conference in an optimal and heavily controlled environment. This tech has way too many variables to be taking this demo as gospel guys. Please just stop with this nonsense.

it was also demoed live.

and i don't get the concept of "wait until launch" with this. there is no way this game is launching without the use of the cloud. it just isn't happening.

 

[LukasTaves]

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/0...mprove-performance-thanks-to-cloud-computing/

It was hyped to hell in a lot of places

Again and how is that all that different from what they are delivering?

The game is tapping into more resources than what's available locally on xbone, in a real time manner that directly impacts the game capabilities.

 

[RexNovis]

it was also demoed live.

and i don't get the concept of "wait until launch" with this. there is no way this game is launching without the use of the cloud. it just isn't happening.

YOu realize what the use of "the cloud" depends on right? Internet infrastructure is far from ideal in most of the world. You cant expect it perform the way it was demoed in an ideal environment when testing in a real world scenario. Surely you can see how the internet connection will be a potential bottleneck and trouble area for this tech so how can you not also acknowledge the potential pitfalls such a technology has in the average person's home?

I think at this point we'll just have to wait until the game goes gold. Some people are just incapable of foresight.

The only ones lacking foresight are the ones who somehow refuse to acknowledge the potential issues with the tech. Depending heavily on reliable high throughput low latency bandwidth in a world where that is extremely rare would almost assuredly lead to issues. Therefore skepticism is the only logical response until proven otherwise.

 

[Pathfinder]

YOu realize what the use of "the cloud" depends on right? Internet infrastructure is far from ideal in most of the world. You cant expect it perform the way it was demoed in an ideal environment when testing in a real world scenario. Surely you can see how the internet connection will be a potential bottleneck and trouble area for this tech so how can you not also acknowledge the potential pitfalls such a technology has in the average person's home?

But that isn't the argument.

The argument is can it or can it not be done. And Microsoft has proved today that, yes, it can be done.

 

[bananafactory]

But that isn't the argument.

The argument is can it or can it not be done. And Microsoft has proved today that, yes, it can be done.

I don't think the argument is really whether or not it can be done. Of course it can be done.

The argument should be can it be done in a way that provides noticeable and significant benefit to improve a game experience, or is it simply more of a bonus for marketing teams than for the players?

Unfortunately as someone else said, unless we look up the skirt of Microsoft and see what's going on down there, I haven't seen anything that really validates one view or the other. There's too little sample size, too little information, too many variables.

 

[Pathfinder]

I don't think the argument is really whether or not it can be done. Of course it can be done.

The argument should be can it be done in a way that provides noticeable and significant benefit to improve a game experience, or is it simply more of a bonus for marketing teams than for the players?

Read through the first few pages of this thread. That's not what most of those people are commenting on.

 

[bananafactory]

Read through the first few pages of this thread. That's not what most of those people are commenting on.

Fair enough, sorry, on long threads I often just read the first page and then skip to the last page and skim, that's my bad.

 

[iMax]

The only ones lacking foresight are the ones who somehow refuse to acknowledge the potential issues with the tech. Depending heavily on reliable high throughput low latency bandwidth in a world where that is extremely rare would almost assuredly lead to issues. Therefore skepticism is the only logical response until proven otherwise.

As has been mentioned, this is geometrical data. We're talking kilobytes and megabytes here. Basically, if Xbox Live works for you, there's no reason this won't either.

 

[USC-fan]

How else would it work? Idk much about the tech at all.

and what cloud nonsense if it's in actual use?

How else it would work is the way it was being billed during xbone launch. For example the offline mode would be how the single player in this game is handled. But if you had an internet connection the game would be "upgraded" real time fully destructible environment by "the power of the cloud".

What a lot didnt understand how this tech would work in single player games. Because with the game hosting on your personal system you have massive lag and very low bandwidth. Given everything we know this tech will never work for a truly single player game. Where the game is hosted on your personal system. It will only work where the game is hosted in the cloud already.

What really happening is you are playing an online match on a server and that server is offloading other tasks to other servers. Or so we are told..... It could just be one powerful server per match. Really dont that much details at this time.

Its why you dont see this tech really used in any games because it such a niche thing. Funny people thinking this is some grand thing and MS DELIVERED. Very funny....

 

[RexNovis]

I don't think the argument is really whether or not it can be done. Of course it can be done.

The argument should be can it be done in a way that provides noticeable and significant benefit to improve a game experience, or is it simply more of a bonus for marketing teams than for the players?

Exactly. The reasoning behind most people saying it was a buzzword or marketing ploy was not because the tech didnt exist it was because the applications of the tech in non ideal environments is extremely limited by the current infrastructure. Claiming that any and all consumers would see dependable results just seems like a pipe dream given everything we know currently. But seeing as it seems plausible to the laymen it is an excellent marketing claim to combat the perceived value deficit due to performance deficit when compared to their direct competition. Thus it becomes a marketing buzzword and gets spouted around with ridiculous and entirely unfeasible claims like 20x computing power and whatnot. Those are the claims people were reacting to.

 

[Trup1aya]

Again: What do you think is the difference between Thunderhead and Azure from an infrastructure, software architecture, and business model perspective? What is your argument that running Thunderhead for game developers produces substantially lower costs than any other IaaS/PaaS use case? What do you think is Microsoft's running cost per server container or data center? What are the service maintenance costs? Why should they differ from any other use case? Any substantial opinion on that, or am I just talking "ass" because you say that I do?

From an infrastructure and software architecture standpoint, there's probably very little difference... But it terms of the business model, how can you possibly think they are the same?

If Thunderhead is identical to Azure in every way, why the hell would they even brand the service Thunderhead? It's obviously because Thunderhead is being marketed to a different customer... Azure is for enterprise, and Thunderhead is for game developers... From microsofts perspective, it's a different customer with different needs. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination that the pricing model will differ as well.

Now that the obvious is out of the way, Don't you think MS has a little more insight on how much a developer/publisher might be willing to spend on networking costs? Presumably, they wouldn't just be paying for addition computing power, but also for the standard multiplayer suite... Perhaps what developers save in that regard versus less flexible server rental solutions allows them to spend a little extra elsewhere... Who knows- rather- who cares? The question you need to be asking yourself is: Why would they develop and try to sell a service if they didn't think their customers (developers who chose to use thunderhead) would value it or be able to afford it. Surely someone ran the numbers before they jumped into this venture.

I don't need to speculate what MS' costs are to maintain and run these data centers... Neither do you. That's for MS to worry about... They obviously figured that can maintain their data centers AND provide this gaming service AND make money at the same time... Your insistence that this isnt economically feasible is based purely on speculation, and is totally ignorant of the fact that you have no idea how Microsoft what Microsoft business model is...

 

[iMax]

From an infrastructure and software architecture standpoint, there's probably very little difference... But it terms of the business model, how can you possibly think they are the same?

If Thunderhead is identical to Azure in every way, why the hell would they even brand the service Thunderhead? It's obviously because Thunderhead is being marketed to a different customer... Azure is for enterprise, and Thunderhead is for game developers... From microsofts perspective, it's a different customer with different needs. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination that the pricing model will differ as well.

Now that the obvious is out of the way, Don't you think MS has a little more insight on how much a developer/publisher might be willing to spend on networking costs? Presumably, they wouldn't just be paying for addition computing power, but also for the standard multiplayer suite... Perhaps what developers save in that regard versus less flexible server rental solutions allows them to spend a little extra elsewhere... The question you need to be asking yourself is: Why would they develop and try to sell a service if they didn't think their customers (developers who chose to use thunderhead) would value it or be able to afford it. Surely someone ran the numbers before they jumped into this venture.

I don't need to speculate what MS' costs are to maintain and run these data centers... Neither do you. That's for MS to worry about... They obviously figured that can maintain their data centers AND provide this gaming service AND make money at the same time...

Azure and Thunderhead are/were the exact same thing. Officially, both are labelled as Microsoft Cloud now.

 

[Facundo_Lopez]

I find amusing that people believe that demo can't be done on a single Xbox.

 

[Pathfinder]

Exactly. The reasoning behind most people saying it was a buzzword or marketing ploy was not because the tech didnt exist it was because the applications of the tech in non ideal environments is extremely limited by the current infrastructure. Claiming that any and all consumers would see dependable results just seems like a pipe dream given everything we know currently. But seeing as it seems plausible to the laymen it is an excellent marketing claim to combat the perceived value deficit due to performance deficit when compared to their direct competition. Thus it becomes a marketing buzzword and gets spouted around with ridiculous and entirely unfeasible claims like 20x computing power and whatnot. Those are the claims people were reacting to.

I disagree most strongly. If you re-read through the beginning part of this thread, you'll see that the majority opinion is that the "power of the cloud" is bullshit marketing speak, and has been since the beginning.

As has been proven today, it's definitely not bullshit.

Yeah, they probably jumped the gun by starting to talk about something that was merely a pipe dream for them, and that's how they got in trouble. Their marketing and PR team latched on to it and they went on and on about it with almost nothing to show for it. And you're right, it was probably partly out of desperation.

Now, the argument on whether the tech is ideal for a consumer environment is another argument altogether and would probably be worthy of a new thread once we get some more data.