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[SenjutsuSage]

"Better rendering"

They really need to stop with this.

Presumably what they're saying, I think, is if they are using cloud processing to help with specific parts of a game, it somehow means they have more available local resources on the console itself to help with game rendering, like maybe for visibility culling of geometry or something. I don't think they're suggesting that there will be superior graphics coming directly from the cloud. Beyond that, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if somewhere down the line we could see a few games have cloud specific benefits if you're connected to the internet, and if you aren't connected or your connection doesn't meet a baseline requirement, then you just get whatever the console can do with local resources.

If there's any truth at all to what they said about latency insensitive tasks, then maybe there could be some interesting applications for that, but of course it doesn't mean anything until we actually see it in a real game. But if all this ends up meaning is dedicated servers are very widespread across Xbox One games, that in itself is already a big enough deal. Microsoft is doing a very good thing here.

 

[NullPointer]

Presumably what they're saying, I think, is if they are using cloud processing to help with specific parts of a game, it somehow means they have more available local resources on the console itself to help with game rendering, like maybe for visibility culling of geometry or something. I don't think they're suggesting that there will be superior graphics coming directly from the cloud.

They were suggesting as much very early on, specifically that the cloud was able to increase the performance of the console anything from 40x to infinity, depending, but they've since moved away from that.

 

[Willy Wanka]

This is a pretty major selling point for me and it also makes the Xbox One Gold fee a lot more palatable in the face of strong competition from PS+. That huge £500 million Azure data center in Dublin means I'd probably get a fantastic ping too (I get 10-20ms on good UK/Irish PC game servers so something close to that would be great). I would however be a bit worried that MS would do what EA (and to a lesser extent Sony) have done in the past and shut down game servers that have only been active for two or three years.

 

[Mobius and pet octopus]

This is a pretty major selling point for me and it also makes the Xbox One Gold fee a lot more palatable in the face of strong competition from PS+. That huge £500 million Azure data center in Dublin means I'd probably get a fantastic ping too (I get 10-20ms on good UK/Irish PC game servers so something close to that would be great). I would however be a bit worried that MS would do what EA (and to a lesser extent Sony) have done in the past and shut down game servers that have only been active for two or three years.

I think the whole point of using azure is to keep servers running indefinitely.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

This is a pretty major selling point for me and it also makes the Xbox One Gold fee a lot more palatable in the face of strong competition from PS+. That huge £500 million Azure data center in Dublin means I'd probably get a fantastic ping too (I get 10-20ms on good UK/Irish PC game servers so something close to that would be great). I would however be a bit worried that MS would do what EA (and to a lesser extent Sony) have done in the past and shut down game servers that have only been active for two or three years.

I'm hoping we don't have that anymore on both next gen platforms.

 

[Jabba]

Tell me how to feel guys. I want to feel good about this but it doesn't seem right to feel that way on GAF lately.

Great news, feel great.

 

[fallagin]

Dang, that is a pretty nice deal. Props to ms on this one.

Is this free for everyone though? Or just AAA devs?

 

[Dai101]

Dang, that is a pretty nice deal. Props to ms on this one.

Is this free for everyone though? Or just AAA devs?

 

[Nightengale]

This is great news, I'm eating my crows.

With that being said, I think the main reason Xbox isn't shouting to high heavens about this is most likely because it's not free... for PC , current gen and PS4.

Just like how Sony not bundling the camera instantly weakens the premise of devs building dedicated motion features for their games by virtue of half the market not having one, cross-gen and the competition not being free too will probably dent this feature saleability somewhat.

This will be great for the small devs though, that want to really really use dedicated servers for their games, but either can't afford them or don't want to be tied to a big publisher.

 

[MustacheBandit_]

I am pumped on this news. I am now more inclined to buy an xb1 now. My online experience is more important to me than which console has a slight graphical power edge.

 

[travisbickle]

That hamster wheel?

If MS is offering this for free, why wouldn't EA simply switch over...less cost is always good to the bottom line.

I think big publishers are going to be the difficult ones to move across.

If you were at the head of a multi million selling game (FIFA for example) and someone was offering to host the game for free, you're going to question the motives, and the quality of the service. There's no such thing as a free lunch, with FIFA for example EA would be handing over the network of millions of active users, customers they need to understand and respond to.

Imagine now if Facebook went to Sony or MS and said they would provide all the hosting and networking of the Live/ PSN friends lists and social aspects for free ... would they do it? it reduces their bottom line.

 

[Nightengale]

Big publishers are also the ones most invested in their own online infrastructures, which can be used across platforms, at their own control and discretion.

 

[Joco]

They've said that developers are guaranteed cloud resources 3x the amount available on each box for each player...
And I believe the Xbone allocates at least six 1.75 Ghz CPU cores to games..
So.... around 3 * 6 * 1.75 Ghz?

http://www.oxm.co.uk/54748/xbox-one...e-equivalent-of-three-xbox-ones-in-the-cloud/
"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. We're doing that flat out so that any game developer can assume that there's 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."

So... mandatory internet connection required for a lot of games to work on the X1?

 

[SEGAvangelist]

So... mandatory internet connection required for a lot of games to work on the X1?

That's the case for many games next gen. Destiny. The Division. The Crew. Games as a service is the future whether we like or not.

 

[HigherLevel]

For someone like me who plays online games quite often, this is huge news. No lag/reduced lag would be amazing

 

[Jabba]

Very true. More like 40-80 is what I'm guessing we'll see.

Yes, this is what I get on some games. 35/35 fiber. SWGEMU I get 47-80ms. In Tera it's 47-80ms.
Not bragging about my connection, nothing to brag about as fios goes much higher and so do other services. In comparison the competing cable company gave the same pings even at a slower speed.

These two games are dedis, that's about what to expect, maybe some will get lower.

If you have a high connection and get high pings to dedi games or even downloads/uploads it could be outside your network and may not be fixable by you.

PSN and XBL were both blazing wirelessly/wired in two parts of my state with two different competing services. I'm just lucky theres less shit in the way of my signal.

 

[PopcornMegaphone]

I think big publishers are going to be the difficult ones to move across.

If you were at the head of a multi million selling game (FIFA for example) and someone was offering to host the game for free, you're going to question the motives, and the quality of the service. There's no such thing as a free lunch, with FIFA for example EA would be handing over the network of millions of active users, customers they need to understand and respond to.

Imagine now if Facebook went to Sony or MS and said they would provide all the hosting and networking of the Live/ PSN friends lists and social aspects for free ... would they do it? it reduces their bottom line.

For publishers it's like free money. No way they don't move.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

For publishers it's like free money. No way they don't move.

Big publishers may rather have control over their own servers, though, especially for certain games. Dedicated servers and cloud compute being free for all developers certainly gives smaller teams a real boost, though, since it allows them to compete with the big guys. That's pretty awesome.

 

[MysteryM]

Looks like MS found its weapon of choice for fans to use in the battle of hearts and minds. But which is more important for next gen gaming? Dedicated servers or native 1080p? There's only one way to find out ...

I'll take a lag free gears of war over a Marcus with shiner ears any day of the week.

 

[SwiftDeath]

I'll take a lag free gears of war over a Marcus with shiner ears any day of the week.

And the battle commences

 

[astarisborn94]

Didn't Titanfall's developer state that they had to pay a discount for dedicated servers? Not quick to say that dedicated servers offered on Xbox One is free yet.

 

[Nightengale]

Didn't Titanfall's developer state that they had to pay a discount for dedicated servers? Not quick to say that dedicated servers offered on Xbox One is free yet.

Unless there's something sneaky behind all of this that isn't revealed to consumers (like maybe only free up to certain amount of resources, etc) ,it's probably referring to dedicated servers cost for PC and 360.

 

[SeaOfMadness]

Unless there's something sneaky behind all of this that isn't revealed to consumers (like maybe only free up to certain amount of resources, etc) ,it's probably referring to dedicated servers cost for PC and 360.

Or it's an old quote from what... 6 months ago? Policies change, ya know.

 

[toff74]

I think its a good bit of forward thinking and a good bit of hyperbole... Extra compute, better looking games, ai computations all seem a little pie in the sky right now.

My own take: When the Original Xbox came out very few people had a broadband connection, but MS had the for thought to add a connection point and develop this thing called xbox live. The 360, same again and the uptake of broadband and fibre connections has jumped dramatically, so their original plan was justified. Now Xbox One is here for 10 years is it really that out there that over the next 10 years peoples connections wont get quicker or areas of the work which were previously internet free will start to progress too?

they have put together an infrastructure of servers that, if used in a certain way could possibly 'help' us gamers in ways that we cant see right now, just as they did with the ridiculous xbox broadband port over 10 years ago!
again, this is my take. It might not be available to everyone day one. It might not even be fully developed day 1. But its there and to me with MS talking about this makes me glad that there can still be some innovation other than just a box that attaches to the TV that plats games.. That's so 90's

 

[UNCMark]

Didn't Titanfall's developer state that they had to pay a discount for dedicated servers? Not quick to say that dedicated servers offered on Xbox One is free yet.

Yes, let's ignore the part where an MS rep was asked directly if this means free servers for every Xbox One game and his response was unequivocally yes for all multiplayer Xbox One titles.

 

[Naked Lunch]

Bingo to you too. I'm not worried about this but as I said, some are making this out like it's some game over type thing when I don't even recall ever talking about a games dedicated servers vs non dedicated.

There's absolutely no doubt that it's better to have them though.

Sounds like you don't play many online games - or at least dont take them seriously. Its hard to go back to P2P after dedicated. It was hard to stomach P2P for all those years. Im curious how well dedi will work with fighting games?

The entire point is Microsoft has a definitive plan about servers - and they have been talking about it ever since they revealed the console. Sony on the other hand is one month away from launch and has said nothing about the subject. MS has a plan built into the foundation of the system, its even a selling point to serious online gamers.

 

[BigDug13]

There's this one line of defense that's been trotted out for months now in so many threads, and I just can't help myself but to use it in this one for this occasion:

"Just wait, Sony will do it too!"

;p

Ok I'm done. Couldn't help it...

 

[kaching]

Games as a service is the future whether we like or not.

That's certainy the attitude they're banking on to make it happen.

 

[SeaOfMadness]

Progression of this thread:

"We're not talking about dedicated servers! It's this 'cloud compute' thing instead. There's NO FREAKIN' WAY that they are avail...'
"Ok, I guess we are, but they're not free!!"
"Ok, but are we sure they are for every dev?"
"Ok, but are we *really* sure, cuz some random guy said maybe not"
"Ok, but if we're sure (and that's a biiiiiig 'if'), dedicated servers aren't really all that great"
"Ok, but they'll just be available on PS4"
"Ok, maybe not right away"
"Ok, but it won't be *that* long"
"Ok, but dedicated servers aren't really that great anyway"

and so on... *sigh*

 

[Naked Lunch]

Progression of this thread:

"We're not talking about dedicated servers! It's this 'cloud compute' thing instead. There's NO FREAKIN' WAY that they are avail...'
"Ok, I guess we are, but they're not free!!"
"Ok, but are we sure they are for every dev?"
"Ok, but are we *really* sure, cuz some random guy said maybe not"
"Ok, but if we're sure (and that's a biiiiiig 'if'), dedicated servers aren't really all that great"
"Ok, but they'll just be available on PS4"
"Ok, maybe not right away"
"Ok, but it won't be *that* long"
"Ok, but dedicated servers aren't really that great anyway"

and so on... *sigh*

Very funny. Very True. Very sad.

There's this one line of defense that's been trotted out for months now in so many threads, and I just can't help myself but to use it in this one for this occasion:

"Just wait, Sony will do it too!"

;p

Ok I'm done. Couldn't help it...

Its about dedicated servers this go round. Last gen it was achievements and party chat.

 

[miDnIghtEr20C]

Progression of this thread:

"We're not talking about dedicated servers! It's this 'cloud compute' thing instead. There's NO FREAKIN' WAY that they are avail...'
"Ok, I guess we are, but they're not free!!"
"Ok, but are we sure they are for every dev?"
"Ok, but are we *really* sure, cuz some random guy said maybe not"
"Ok, but if we're sure (and that's a biiiiiig 'if'), dedicated servers aren't really all that great"
"Ok, but they'll just be available on PS4"
"Ok, maybe not right away"
"Ok, but it won't be *that* long"
"Ok, but dedicated servers aren't really that great anyway"

and so on... *sigh*

El oh el. That was pretty good.

 

[Ubersnug]

I would however be a bit worried that MS would do what EA (and to a lesser extent Sony) have done in the past and shut down game servers that have only been active for two or three years.

I got the impression that this would be less of an issue. They keep mentioning that servers can be 'spun up' quickly and on demand - almost as if a new dedicated server could be instanced as players need them. So, whether this means me as a player deciding I want to play game X, that is 10 years old. Jumping on MP and a new dedicated server is spun up as I try to connect. Or it means developers can 'spin up' new servers quickly if there is high demand.

Would love this to be expanded upon.

 

[Longhorn Fan]

Progression of this thread:

"We're not talking about dedicated servers! It's this 'cloud compute' thing instead. There's NO FREAKIN' WAY that they are avail...'
"Ok, I guess we are, but they're not free!!"
"Ok, but are we sure they are for every dev?"
"Ok, but are we *really* sure, cuz some random guy said maybe not"
"Ok, but if we're sure (and that's a biiiiiig 'if'), dedicated servers aren't really all that great"
"Ok, but they'll just be available on PS4"
"Ok, maybe not right away"
"Ok, but it won't be *that* long"
"Ok, but dedicated servers aren't really that great anyway"

and so on... *sigh*

LOL, I just read through the thread and this sums it up so perfectly. So much doubt about MSFT.

 

[spwolf]

LOL, I just read through the thread and this sums it up so perfectly. So much doubt about MSFT.

doubt it because they lied and deceived a lot for the past 8 months. So far almost nothing that they have said turned out to be 100% true.

For instance, Activision said that COD will have "dedicated servers" using same tech as Killzone (partially p2p).

To me that means that they wont be full dedicated servers on Azure either but rather servers that use mix of dedicated and p2p.

As to the cloud compute, anyone who has ever configured and used Azure knows that there charge for various things, there is no "flat" fee for using it... you pay for compute, storage, bandwidth, all separately.

 

[SmashBro]

Progression of this thread:

"We're not talking about dedicated servers! It's this 'cloud compute' thing instead. There's NO FREAKIN' WAY that they are avail...'
"Ok, I guess we are, but they're not free!!"
"Ok, but are we sure they are for every dev?"
"Ok, but are we *really* sure, cuz some random guy said maybe not"
"Ok, but if we're sure (and that's a biiiiiig 'if'), dedicated servers aren't really all that great"
"Ok, but they'll just be available on PS4"
"Ok, maybe not right away"
"Ok, but it won't be *that* long"
"Ok, but dedicated servers aren't really that great anyway"

and so on... *sigh*

 

[Nightengale]

LOL, I just read through the thread and this sums it up so perfectly. So much doubt about MSFT.

I think the doubts are justified given how sketchy some of their marketing had been (CoD servers, etc) but once it's clarified, people should come around to it.


There's always bits and pieces about the respective competitor offering that we all wish was available on our platform of choice.

 

[KidBeta]

Presumably what they're saying, I think, is if they are using cloud processing to help with specific parts of a game, it somehow means they have more available local resources on the console itself to help with game rendering, like maybe for visibility culling of geometry or something. I don't think they're suggesting that there will be superior graphics coming directly from the cloud. Beyond that, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if somewhere down the line we could see a few games have cloud specific benefits if you're connected to the internet, and if you aren't connected or your connection doesn't meet a baseline requirement, then you just get whatever the console can do with local resources.

If there's any truth at all to what they said about latency insensitive tasks, then maybe there could be some interesting applications for that, but of course it doesn't mean anything until we actually see it in a real game. But if all this ends up meaning is dedicated servers are very widespread across Xbox One games, that in itself is already a big enough deal. Microsoft is doing a very good thing here.

afaik visibility culling is done on the GPU, it would be woefully slow on the CPU this gen.

 

[Rourkey]

Didn't Titanfall's developer state that they had to pay a discount for dedicated servers? Not quick to say that dedicated servers offered on Xbox One is free yet.

Respawn may not have known the deal other Devs were getting so could have just been diplomatic

 

[Rourkey]

Have woke up to this fantastic news, any chance that these servers will be integrated into Live i.e seemless rather than other dedicated server implementations like on Battlefield where you have to hunt down servers?

 

[ChiliManiac]

Free for the dev, charge the player.

I'd gladly pay if it means the devs are getting something out of it.

 

[ChiliManiac]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-10-15-the-difference-engine



Thought that this was a pretty informative article and didn't want it to get buried in the other thread.

If true, then developers having free access to servers is a big deal I think, and can be used as a selling point when MS is trying court developers and publishers.

**Warning: this article contains positive outlooks and opinions on MS and the Cloud

Statement from Albert in other thread:

This news makes me drool with anticipation for the X1. Dedicated Serves on all games is going to be a miracle.

 

[killer rin]

Respawn may not have known the deal other Devs were getting so could have just been diplomatic

Unless maybe Respawn had gotten the prices for PC azure access and Xbox One Access mixed up. Because if I remember them correctly they are also using Azure for the PC Version. So maybe when they were saying cost they were meaning PC and any other ports they may do.

 

[Tycho_b]

Responses around not-so-new-news around something that is no more than promise now shows one thing - new focus groups results have landed

No more balance and power, it's back to cloud.

 

[Rourkey]

I think as the generation goes on this will become a bigger and bigger advantage, it's easy setting up dedicated servers at the beginning of the life cycle when the install base is small but what happens when your big release sells 5m copies day one? You need something like Azure to support dedicated servers for that number of gamers

 

[Nightengale]

Have woke up to this fantastic news, any chance that these servers will be integrated into Live i.e seemless rather than other dedicated server implementations like on Battlefield where you have to hunt down servers?

Depends, I would guess.

From the sounds of it, it seems like very few games that isn't first party would be utilising this feature, probably due to the significant amount of cross-gen and other platforms they're supporting for their games.

So far, it seems like only first-party titles and Titanfall are using this. We'll see if things change 6 months down the road.

 

[FINALBOSS]

If the servers the CoD Ghost dude described (as we know they are going through Azure) then these dedicated servers are very much the hybrid system that Killzone uses...

 

[Garrett 2U]

If the servers the CoD Ghost dude described (as we know they are going through Azure) then these dedicated servers are very much the hybrid system that Killzone uses...

I recall them saying that COD uses a hybrid system of listen servers and dedicated servers.
After hearing this news, I'm guessing it's pretty likely that different platforms have different levels of server support for COD Ghosts.

 

[FINALBOSS]

I recall them saying that COD uses a hybrid system of listen servers and dedicated servers.
After hearing this news, I'm guessing it's pretty likely that different platforms have different levels of server support for COD Ghosts.

Doesn't seem to imply that at all..

Dedicated servers will be used on current gen, next gen and PC with Ghosts. And, in order to make sure that people have the best possible experience regardless of platform, location or connection, Ghosts will be using a hybrid system of dedicated servers and listen servers. So no matter where you are the game will always be trying to give you the best online performance possible.

It sounds like the same stuff GG said except without elaborating on it like they did.

 

[Garrett 2U]

Doesn't seem to imply that at all..



It sounds like the same stuff GG said except without elaborating on it like they did.

Yeah, I don't know. The statement itself is ridiculously vague.
"All platforms will use dedicated servers. We'll use dedicated servers and listen servers."
Aiiight lol.

I figured he just is lumping both types of multiplayer servers as "dedicated servers" (same thing Killzone did pretty much) which is how I came to my conclusion.

 

[astarisborn94]

Unless there's something sneaky behind all of this that isn't revealed to consumers (like maybe only free up to certain amount of resources, etc) ,it's probably referring to dedicated servers cost for PC and 360.

Hopefully you're right on that.

If you are, then this is really good news here. Even as someone who doesn't like Microsoft and loathed the Xbox One in its original form, there's no denying that dedicated servers being free for developers to use is a good thing.

Yes, let's ignore the part where an MS rep was asked directly if this means free servers for every Xbox One game and his response was unequivocally yes for all multiplayer Xbox One titles.

I was just trying to ask a question here since Titanfall developers did have to pay for dedicated servers. I'm not taking anything Microsoft says nowadays at face value.