News at eleven: Microsoft has a product and it doesn't care who it sells it to. While the so-called "power of the cloud" was a big buzz word when the Xbox One was announced, the Redmond firm has been a little less forthcoming about the bullet point of late. And now a Twitter exchange with gaffer Phil Spencer has revealed that the company's open to licensing the tech to Sony should the Japanese giant want it.
"Azure services are available to any game, even other platform's exclusives," he candidly declared. "We wouldn't keep someone from using it." The technology was first leveraged in Titanfall, but Crackdown 3 looks to be the biggest use case thus far. We're just curious whether it will actually work; offloading computationally intensive tasks to a server sounds smart, but what happens when your connection quality dips?
[source twitter.com, via dualshockers.com, gamespot.com]
Comments 19
They're just selling the tech, not leveraging it as a console distinguisher.
We have Gaikai....
@Heavyman99 Absolutely, Microsoft doesn't care who uses their servers as long as they get paid. But it's a stark change of attitude from the start of the generation when the "power of the cloud" was being flaunted around as a major differentiator for the Xbox One.
Then again, practically every single part of Microsoft's messaging has changed, so it's no real surprise.
@get2sammyb We're just curious whether it will actually work; offloading computationally intensive tasks to a server sounds smart, but what happens when your connection quality dips?
It definitely works when the numbers get so big your home system slows down, but the math can be done from afar resulting in the result being drawn quicker.
An example of this would be me giving you 10 multiplication sums in a row, all of which use quadruple digit numbers. I'm sure you could get the answer - but it would take some time (you in this instance are the ps4) over the room is a colleague with a calculator he can work out the sums and shout the answers over to you - which would be quicker (your colleague in this instance is the cloud).
@themcnoisy
Cloud computing definitely works and our company uses it all the time. But there is a reason why our European office uses it and not our South African one. When it comes to "calculations" as complex as we see in videogames the cloud could work wonders, but in order to use it in a game you'll have to accept you'll cut your potential userbase for that specific game in half at best; it's almost like developing a VR game at this point. If you wanna go full cloud, you'll reach just 10% of the customers.
I played Titan Fall and to be fair the AI which was controlled by the cloud acted like dumn robots that just just ran into walls and were cannon fodder. Apart that Titan Fall was a really fun game.
I don't want anything to with Microsoft thanks :-/ Got rid of my Windows Laptop a few months back and it's been the best thing I have ever done
The technology is ready working, but the infrastructure isn't there yet so they'll need to recoup some money, the reason we don't see more of crackdown is probably to do with it not really working well enough. But I am overworked tired and grumpy so may be being overly negative
I am not up to speed with this technology but if you have a poor internet connection does that mean the game would run worse?
As someone with an XB1, I must admit that I struggle to see the 'power of the cloud' working in any game. I hear its being used in Titanfall but that didn't have anything that I haven't seen in other games. I know it had AI cannon fodder but then so does SW:BF fighter Squadron mode. Other games have had a lot of destruction in (like Battlefield) so what makes Crackdown 3 any different?
The principal behind it may be great but I am yet to see any significant uses that can be directly attributed to its use compared to those that don't, won't or can't use the power of the cloud.
"But it's a stark change of attitude from the start of the generation when the "power of the cloud" was being flaunted around as a major differentiator for the Xbox One."
And I think we've seen in the time between then and now that it has made next to no difference whatsoever.
I don't trust this cloud stuff. Sounds like it's very dependent on the internet and I can't really depend on my connection. I was playing JC3 today and it was having trouble logging in. The internet in my area is good enough to download updates but if the game needed a constant connection to run you wouldn't be able to play.
@BAMozzy Its graphical effects in crackdown, difficult to explain but I saw a demo which was pretty impressive. To be fair I have a soft spot for the underrated crackdown 1 and 2 so my view was cloudy - but the smoke, particle and refraction going on was crazy - the xbox one without the cloud computing slowed to 3 frames per second if I remember correctly.
@themcnoisy I remember seeing the demo and then the subsequent Crackdown 3 reveal too. However the destruction itself, whilst maybe a bit more impressive than anything I had seen before in gaming, it was still not that unique. Granted it is dealing with more 'particles; and at a higher resolution than previously seen in gaming, its still not that 'new' We didn't need the cloud for Battlefield or Just Cause and those games featured a lot of destruction too.
I must admit I liked Crackdown but was disappointed by 2 and really don't see that 3 requires destruction and seems out of place for an Agent that is supposed to be protecting the city and eradicating the crime lords and gangs - what about the rooftop races and orb collecting if the buildings are destroyed? Assuming only the bosses buildings (or a select few not all) can be destroyed, then that's weird to me. Hurting civilians or other Agents was not exactly seen as a 'good thing' in the game. Anyway I am not going to discuss why I was not impressed by 3's reveal and why I don't think it will work as well here.
The point of my post wasn't so much about maybe capable of doing but more about the current application. Its very difficult to tell if its actually doing anything different. I see no reason for example why Titanfall couldn't and wouldn't run on a PS4 with exactly the same content, quantity of AI etc. That game also didn't run well all the time - certainly not at launch and suffered frame rate drops too.
I must admit I was more impressed by the physics in the Uncharted demo - although on a smaller scale to the destruction seen in that Crackdown video, the way the bullets hit and moved Sand bags and then sand spilling out, objects on tables falling off and hitting other objects as if they were real and solid (also seen during the driving sequence), corrugated iron having holes ripped into them by bullets etc etc.
I have seen tech video's of the cloud and its 'benefits' but yet to see any real or noticeable benefits in game - certainly compared to similar games that don't utilise it. If MS really want to sell it, they haven't exactly set the gaming world alight by its power or use. Some of that could be down down to the developers of course but its not made any noticeable difference to me.
Cloud......it's just a server running code....it requires decent connection and is useless for anything realtime.... It could be used for background calculations.... But again if the connection drops the console will need to do it instead, so its ultimately useless.
Hopefully the PS4 can also leverage the power of blast processing.
Haven't noticed a damn difference this thing does and until its proven it would be a huge waste of time for Sony, Nintendo or anybody else to pay MS to use this. The fact MS is willing to make a deal is a little telling, imo. Sure, it's more $$$ but at the same time, if it's such a huge difference maker then why do what is essentially equal to a sports team signing the best free agent on the market then sitting his a$$ on the bench? Being an Xbox One owner I'd love MS to prove to me this thing is worth a sh*t but unlike some dumba$$es on Twitter and Youtube, I'm not a corporate slave. Just like I talk a lot about how Sony has to do some more show than tell there's still a lot of showing MS has yet to do this gen but Phil Spencer, eventhough he's nothing more than a talking head in a suit, is somehow viewed as a 'friend' of the gamer so people just idiotically take his word for it.
SEGA had this decades ago and it had a cooler label - blast processing.
Tap here to load 19 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...