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[Phawx]

Hmm, what does 'equivalent' mean in this context though? That still may not mean many physical servers at all. We need clarification on this I think, because it means the difference between a PR bullshit line and it being an actual valuable, useable benefit of the system.

From the quote equivalent is in reference to the Xbox One. Let's say worst case scenario , even if it only means CPU, it it means you have something close to the performance of 24 Jaguar cores per Xbox One in the living room.

Let's see how many servers in the cloud they say they have at next years E3.

 

[Bulk_Rate]

Has there been any confirmation at all, that these 300,000 servers are actually physical blades? And not virtual?

That would be hilarious if they are not.

Considering that Amazon's EC2 was estimated at "only" 450K physical servers by a researcher a year ago, and the titanic workloads which that cloud supports, I find 300K physical servers for Xbox hard to understand now that MS has (implicitly if not in a forthcoming way) backed away from emphasizing "Cloud Magic" as central to the Xbone experience.

 

[BruiserBear]

Sony was the king of proprietary hell. The Vita says hello. Also paying for gold on microsoft now gives you dedicated multiplayer servers whereas PS+ does not. PS+ is still an awesome rental service though. But don't fool yourself, Sony only introduced PS+ because MS was mopping them up. Unless you think going from 150 million consoles to 75million consoles is a success?

Has it been confirmed all Xbox One multiplayer games will have dedicated servers?

 

[zomgbbqftw]

I think we found Takuyas, MS biased, twin.

Naaw, that was FordGTGuy, but I think he got permabanned.

 

[obonicus]

From the quote equivalent is in reference to the Xbox One. Let's say worst case scenario , even if it only means CPU, it it means you have something close to the performance of 24 Jaguar cores per Xbox One in the living room.

How does this manifest, exactly?

 

[Gemüsepizza]

Has it been confirmed all Xbox One multiplayer games will have dedicated servers?

I don't think so. And I am pretty sure that if a X1 games has dedicated servers, the PS4 version will also have dedicated servers. They won't create a P2P MP mode for PS4 owners, this whole dedicated server thing is just PR, at best an advantage for publishers (if it's really free for them).

 

[coldfoot]

Sony was the king of proprietary hell. The Vita says hello. Also paying for gold on microsoft now gives you dedicated multiplayer servers whereas PS+ does not.

Please give your sources for the following:
1. Gold means dedicated game HOSTING servers for EVERY GAME and not like the Uncharted stat servers ND rolled out using Amazon EC2 (Cloud)
2. PS+ won't have dedicated servers, given that even a few PS3 games had dedicated game HOSTING servers (MAG, Warhawk) with free online.

Don't fool yourself, the decision to use dedicated game HOSTING servers still lies entirely up to the publisher and if they want to spend the money for them. They're not going to use it in one platform and forgo it on the other. If a game's going to have dedicated hosts, it'll be on every platform, or it'll be P2P on every platform.

PS+ is still an awesome rental service though. But don't fool yourself, Sony only introduced PS+ because MS was mopping them up. Oh and don't get my started on the PS2. Want to play 4-player? Buy a multitap. Want to save your game? Buy a memory card. Want to go online? Buy a modem.

I know all that, and that's why I like Sony because they're a corporation that's stuck in a hard place and they have to put a lot of effort to win the dollars of their customers. I like corporations that bend over for me instead of making me bend over.

Xbox one's proprietary wireless signal and kinect means you don't even need to turn on your controller or assign the correct player to it.

Wow, totally worth $100.

And you can add an additional hard drive to it, though it's only external drives through USB 3.0. It's not as integrated as the PS4 sure, but for the vast majority of end users that don't know what the hell a SATA hard drive is, plugging in USB is dirt simple.

In the 360, they artificially limited to 16GB, then expanded it to 32GB, purely to sell their own overpriced HDD's.

TL;DR Apple, Sony, MS are not your friends. Anytime anyone of them gains dominance they will shove proprietary crap down your throat.

True, and that's why Sony's so hot right now, due to lack of dominance. But, even Apple, with all its dominance, did not lock Netflix behind a paywall, or forced the consumers to use proprietary headsets like MS, so MS deserves the extra hate IMO.

 

[dr. apocalipsis]

Hmm, what does 'equivalent' mean in this context though? That still may not mean many physical servers at all. We need clarification on this I think, because it means the difference between a PR bullshit line and it being an actual valuable, useable benefit of the system.

Probably this is well discussed over Gaf, but my concern is other.

Are we moving from a model where dropping online support for a game means that no more multiplayer is available to a model where it means no more game itself? Will this cloud be 'free'? Will there be low setting for free and high setting after payment wall?

Or how about Apple's old and continued practice of form over function. Such as placing a hard drive right next to a speaker that would cause the machine to crash any time a loud sound was played?

Wow! Can you post some info about this, please?

 

[BibiMaghoo]

From the quote equivalent is in reference to the Xbox One. Let's say worst case scenario , even if it only means CPU, it it means you have something close to the performance of 24 Jaguar cores per Xbox One in the living room.

Let's see how many servers in the cloud they say they have at next years E3.

Considering that Amazon's EC2 was estimated at "only" 450K physical servers by a researcher a year ago, and the titanic workloads which that cloud supports, I find 300K physical servers for Xbox hard to understand now that MS has (implicitly if not in a forthcoming way) backed away from emphasizing "Cloud Magic" as central to the Xbone experience.

From what I understand of the system they are using, Azure is setup to deal with considerably more than Xbox One. It seems entirely possible they are quoting the full power of that network, leaving out that it's purpose is for many other things, and that Xbone will never in fact touch the power that has been quoted for some time, if at all.

The Azure network lets people hire virtual servers as customers, host websites and databases and other services such as web applications. I find it highly dubious that the same system has 300,000 servers for the Xbone in addition to this.

 

[Spongebob]

I'm pretty sure Tyrone_Biggums is specialguy...

 

[Jotaka]

300k dedicated server? it's just crazy dream.

Just search the net for datacenter and see what 300k server farm look like.

For instance, one server can use between 500 to 1,200 watts per hour, according to Ehow.com. If the average use is 850 watts per hour, multiplied by 24 that equals 20,400 watts daily, or 20.4 kilowatts (kWh). Multiply that by 365 days a year for 7,446 kWh per year. According to the US Energy Information Administration (PDF), the average kWh cost for commercial use from January 2012 through January 2013 was 9.83 cents. So that means it would cost $731.94 to power the aforementioned server for one year.

source: http://www.zdnet.com/toolkit-calculate-data-center-server-power-usage-7000013699/

700 x 300k = ~ $220million for just energy bill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e97g7_qSxA
OVH.com builds a data center that will host 360,000 physical servers

yeah... right.. 300k physical servers... nops

 

[Perkel]

The only confirmation we got at all was the PR fact sheet that was given to all MS people for E3.



The benefits of the cloud offer scalability. 300k today could be a million in a year or two. I think referencing that quote is a better metric.

300k are only virtual servers not actual hardware servers. As of going for milion in year or two.

It will not happen.

Google has the most physical severs and that number is above 1 000 000. I don't think any game cloud computing will reach 1mln physical servers in near future.

 

[avaya]

I'm pretty sure Tyrone_Biggums is specialguy...

Me too.

 

[Spongebob]

Me too.

Last year on B3D I remember someone linking to another form where specialguy posted as under the name Tyrone.

 

[disastermouse]

Watching Netflix without a paywall is one hell of an argument. I think that pretty much shuts this whole deal down man ...

This is the reason I switched from Xbox 360 to PS3 for my main system - so yeah, it's kind of a big deal. At least for me.

 

[avaya]

Last year on B3D I remember someone linking to another form where specialguy posted as under the name Tyrone.

Opa Ages or something?


He has been having a meltdown for the past 6 months across multiple forums.

 

[zomgbbqftw]

Me too.

I think he is a FordGTGuy alt.

 

[ElTorro]

The number of servers (virtual or physical) doesn't actually matter at all.

The only interesting metric is the ratio between the money they earn from a single player (through XBLG and game purchases) and the cost necessary to provide server resources for this player's online time. The actual allocated server resources will scale with the demand.

An interessting question would be: how much server resources are developer's allowed to allocated for one hour of playtime of one single player.

 

[Spongebob]

Opa Ages or something?


He has been having a meltdown for the past 6 months across multiple forums.

Yes, that was the one.

 

[zomgbbqftw]

Yes, that was the one.

Must have Opa-ages been because specialguy is Rangers on B3D. I'm almost certain.

 

[coldfoot]

300k dedicated server? it's just crazy dream.

Just search the net for datacenter and see what 300k server farm look like.



700 x 300k = ~ $220million for just energy bill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e97g7_qSxA
OVH.com builds a data center that will host 360,000 physical servers

yeah... right.. 300k physical servers... nops

Datacenters pay 2-3 cents not 7.5. Still an enourmous power bill for sure, but not as much as you calculated.

 

[statham]

Naaw, that was FordGTGuy, but I think he got permabanned.

damnit FordGTGuy. pours liquor.

 

[avaya]

Must have Opa-ages been because specialguy is Rangers on B3D. I'm almost certain.

Specialguy/Rangers/Tyrone are all the same person.

FordGTGuy got permed? Get in.

 

[chubigans]

damnit FordGTGuy. pours liquor.

He was just unbanned like a few days ago...jeez!

 

[AgentP]

I'm pretty sure Tyrone_Biggums is specialguy...

Well if true, he will run back to B3D and post as Rangers where he can post without fear of banning (they love MS there) as he calls every one a Sony fanboy that dares not tow the MS company line. He will also continue to drag CBOAT's name through the mud for exposing MS.

 

[Mokubba]

Specialguy/Rangers/Tyrone are all the same person.

FordGTGuy got permed? Get in.

Now it all makes sense

 

[Proelite]

300k are only virtual servers not actual hardware servers. As of going for milion in year or two.

It will not happen.

Google has the most physical severs and that number is above 1 000 000. I don't think any game cloud computing will reach 1mln physical servers in near future.

I hunk Ms is counting all Azure servers in the 300,00 comment.

 

[MogCakes]

He will also continue to drag CBOAT's name through the mud for exposing MS.

That's a good thing. CBOAT is mostly known on GAF, it wouldn't serve him well to have other sites turning their eyes on him. There are a great many people who would love to see him taken down.

 

[rdrr gnr]

Naaw, that was FordGTGuy, but I think he got permabanned.

I'm surprised it took that long.

 

[mboojigga]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ44hEr5DFE

 

[Averon]

FordGTGuy got perm'd? The guy JUST came back from a ban. This has got to be a record.

 

[Gxgear]

Has there been any confirmation at all, that these 300,000 servers are actually physical blades? And not virtual?

That would be hilarious if they are not.

The way Respawn described it, it seems like it's dynamically allocating a dedicated amount of bandwidth to each game session with Microsoft's current infrastructure. Sounds like a no to me.

 

[bgassassin]

Well if true, he will run back to B3D and post as Rangers where he can post without fear of banning (they love MS there) as he calls every one a Sony fanboy that dares not tow the MS company line.

He's been banned on B3D before as well.

 

[mboojigga]

There's an article here describing the physical building blocks of Azure, discrete shipping containers with 2500 hardware servers each (that one says 1800-2500). This article claims that in November Azure consisted of 8 datacenters, each of which contains 360,000 servers (which'd be 144 2500 server containers; they stack them double-decker, so they'd need 72 "parking spots"). That article claims that 13 additional datacenters were under construction at that time and that new server installation continues 24/7/365.

http://www.neowin.net/news/inside-windows-azure-server-container

http://up2v.nl/2012/11/11/a-look-into-windows-azure-datacenter/

This excerpt from a book called Azure in Action was posted in April 2010:

Quote:
Cblox are made out of the shipping containers that you see on ocean going vessels and on eighteen wheelers on the highways. They are built very sturdily and follow a standard size and shape that are easy to move around. A Cblox can hold anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers each. This is a massive increase in data center density, 10 times more than a traditional data center. The Chicago mega data center holds about 360,000 servers and is the only primary consumer from a dedicated nuclear power plant core from Chicago Power & Light. How many of your data centers are nuclear powered?
...

When Azure became commercially available in January, 2010 there were six known Azure data centers including Washington, Texas, Chicago, Ireland, Belgium, Singapore, and Hong Kong. While Microsoft will not list where all of their data centers are for security reasons, they say they have more than 10 and fewer than 100 data centers. Microsoft already has data centers all over the world to support their existing services, such as Virtual Earth, Bing Search, XBox Live, and others. If we just assume there are only 10, and each one is as big as Chicago, then Microsoft will need to manage 3.5 million servers as part of Azure. That is a lot of work.

 

[phosphor112]

Well, these were some interesting revelations...

 

[CLEEK]

I hunk Ms is counting all Azure servers in the 300,00 comment.

Yeah, that's clearly what's going on. And with Azure, you pay for compute and bandwidth used, not whole servers. So you could have 100 seperate Xbone games serviced by a single physical server, for instance.

 

[Phawx]

Please give your sources for the following:
1. Gold means dedicated game HOSTING servers for EVERY GAME and not like the Uncharted stat servers ND rolled out using Amazon EC2 (Cloud)
2. PS+ won't have dedicated servers, given that even a few PS3 games had dedicated game HOSTING servers (MAG, Warhawk) with free online.

1.) https://twitter.com/JamesStevenson/status/336955409187348482

For the record I was only talking about dedicated hosting. Why are you being so dismissive like dedicated hosting for every multiplayer game like it's not a big deal? Mind you, it's very easy to get gold for $30/year whenever deals happen. That's 8 cents a day.

2.) My proof is the lack of any evidence whatsoever from Sony. MS has gone on record already. But yea, I think we'll see dedicated servers from first party Sony titles that are heavy on Multiplayer. Not that it matters anyway because you'll need the awesome (not sarcastic) PS+ service to get online anyhow.

Look I agree that MS does shitty things. I'm most certainly not arguing that with you. The limit on the USB drives on the 360 for instance, is crap.

Basically on the Xbox One, everyone's complaints about paying for p2p are no longer valid. And at the price we are paying, it's really not that bad for what you get. Plus, online storage space for saves/profiles/whatever-isn't-a-game is unlimited.

Again, my argument isn't that MS does shitty things. My argument is that you aren't giving them the benefit of fixing things that were a sore point.

P.S. making the audio jack on the Xbox one controller was a bit of a dick move. I'm just hoping that when we use Xbox One controllers on PC any headsets that use that port will also work on PC (along with the 5.1 audio support). Have to wait and see I suppose.

Wow! Can you post some info about this, please?

It's in a documentary "Welcome to Mac" but you can find it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgQhMRUJ4Tc at the 2:10 mark. It's hilarious how Jim Reekes presents it too. Just an engineer shaking his head at the dumb decisions they pushed through to shipped products.

 

[ElTorro]

This article claims that in November Azure consisted of 8 datacenters, each of which contains 360,000 servers (which'd be 144 2500 server containers; they stack them double-decker, so they'd need 72 "parking spots"). That article claims that 13 additional datacenters were under construction at that time and that new server installation continues 24/7/365.

http://up2v.nl/2012/11/11/a-look-into-windows-azure-datacenter/

Interesting article, thanks. It's crazy how steep the growth of data centers actually is, I underestimated it, although I had already seen those containers. A colleague of mine as been given a tour through one of these data centers, and he reported that they do not bother with fixing individual servers anymore, but just replace containers as a whole.

 

[smerfy]

I hunk Ms is counting all Azure servers in the 300,00 comment.

Based off of the data centers already operational, Microsoft's Azure server count is estimated to be somewhere between 4-6x that many as we speak, with more centers becoming operational this year and next that will expand server capacity by ~150% apparently.

So no, Microsoft isn't counting all Azure servers in the 300k comment, based off of the information available on the size of the infrastructure.

 

[Liberty4all]

Sometimes I feel like if Microsoft just talked to it's audience like adults rather than using stupid buzz words, they would win back alot of loyalty. The stuff coldfoot said earlier. ... that to me is "wow maybe MS is trying after all" type of stuff, instead of "ZOMG CLOUDSSSSS" from MS PR

 

[coldfoot]

1.) https://twitter.com/JamesStevenson/status/336955409187348482

For the record I was only talking about dedicated hosting. Why are you being so dismissive like dedicated hosting for every multiplayer game like it's not a big deal? Mind you, it's very easy to get gold for $30/year whenever deals happen. That's 8 cents a day.

Already disproven by COD:Ghosts. That Wired editor was talking out of his ass and completely falling for the MS marketing. Devs can use dedicated servers from MS just like they could from Amazon or Google. It's not free and it's not mandatory. Also pointless in some game types as well.

2.) My proof is the lack of any evidence whatsoever from Sony. MS has gone on record already.

No they have not, it's Wired's imagination. You won't see anyone from MS confirming dedicated hosting servers for every game, because that's up to the developers and if they want to pay for them.

 

[Spinning Plates]

I'd be content if all MP FPS games had dedicated servers especially as many of them will be 60fps. I guess fighting games would benefit from them too.

I think Major Nelson needs to clarify this situation.

 

[Sean*O]

Sometimes I feel like if Microsoft just talked to it's audience like adults rather than using stupid buzz words, they would win back alot of loyalty. The stuff coldfoot said earlier. ... that to me is "wow maybe MS is trying after all" type of stuff, instead of "ZOMG CLOUDSSSSS" from MS PR

I agree, they need totally new direction. More facts, no spin.

 

[Rogue_Ledr]

I think Major Nelson needs to clarify this situation.

Oh yeah because a PR mouthpiece is the guy you always want for the most genuine and veritable appraisal of a situation.

Cboat has more credibility in his pinky than Larry Hyrb has in his whole damn body.

 

[Spinning Plates]

Oh yeah because a PR mouthpiece is the guy you always want for the most genuine and veritable appraisal of a situation.

Well if he dodges or tries to skirt around the issue then we know.

Also has anyone considered that MS may directly offer gamers the choice of whether they want to play across dedicated servers?

Call of Duty: Ghosts Dedicated Server Season Pass $49.99

or you could buy credit like 500, 1,000 or 2,000 minutes to use on any game that supports dedicated servers.

 

[NullPointer]

Also has anyone considered that MS may directly offer gamers the choice of whether they want to play across dedicated servers?

On top of the Gold fee? No thanks.

But if it was Silver = Peer to Peer, Gold = Dedicated, then sure, sounds good.

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

Already disproven by COD:Ghosts. That Wired editor was talking out of his ass and completely falling for the MS marketing. Devs can use dedicated servers from MS just like they could from Amazon or Google. It's not free and it's not mandatory. Also pointless in some game types as well.


No they have not, it's Wired's imagination. You won't see anyone from MS confirming dedicated hosting servers for every game, because that's up to the developers and if they want to pay for them.

When did Activision say they weren't using dedicated servers?

 

[gillFTR]

On top of the Gold fee? No thanks.

But if it was Silver = Peer to Peer, Gold = Dedicated, then sure, sounds good.

Azure is going to be a service 3rd party developers arent going to pay for it when they can design around other services for both platforms. It's how the developer chooses to design their games, thinking that all games willing be running on dedicated servers on XBONE while P2P is still so cost efficient for developers is hopeful(aka cod franchise). Unless games start heading into more immersive and integrated multiplayer P2P will still be here.

When did Activision say they weren't using dedicated servers?

I'm guessing he used common sense. Why would you waste money on dedicated servers/bandwidth on a 10+ million player base when mine and yours is free to them.

 

[dragonelite]

id reckon putting 3 times the jaguar cpu in the cloud should not be so hard?

 

[JawzPause]

I'm assuming that's why the Xbox One is so much larger than the PS4, and has an external power supply. MS wants to make damn sure that doesn't happen again.

Does the PS4 have an external power supply? And if not, because of its small size, would this put it at risk of overheating?