Xbox Live Compute won't be exclusive to Xbox platforms
"The cloud" is one of the big features of Xbox One. Games like Forza 5 and Titanfall take advantage of Xbox Live Compute to offload certain computations to Microsoft's Azure servers. And while Microsoft is keen to talk about using the cloud with Xbox One, Xbox Live lead programming manager John Bruno did say that the plan is to support much more than Microsoft's new console.
"This is a platform we plan on connecting any device to," he said when responding to an inquiry at GDC Next. A member of the audience asked if it would be possible to use Xbox Live Compute on other platforms, like Flash and PlayStation 4. Of course, do note that Bruno's comment doesn't explicitly confirm PS4 support.
Sony did confirm that PS4 will support cloud computing. But while Microsoft will be providing Compute free for Xbox One developers, we find it unlikely they'll be as generous on non-Microsoft platforms.
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replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Xbox Live Compute won't be exclusive to Xbox platforms.
"The cloud" is one of the big features of Xbox One. Games like Forza 5 and Titanfall take advantage of Xbox Live Compute to offload certain...-
That's kinda what I expected. It's one of those internal conflicts that the Windows (Azure) team would win. Though I doubt that's the case here, I expect this case is purely: they'll happily take money from developers to use their cloud services.
I'm very curious to see if this'll end up being a gimmicky thing or actually used practically. So far it's mostly a gimmick (oo, dedicated servers and multiplayer bots in Titanfall; oo, drivetar profiling in Forza), but I expect someone will make a good case for this at least once, kinda how Dance Central was the only useful game to come out of the Kinect.-
The thing is the Cloud can't be used for anything other than gimmicky features... too much latency to benefit the CPU/GPU for additional horsepower.
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Yup, and I'm looking forward to seeing some tangible examples of that. I'm curious to see if someone can make it a useful thing, or if it'll end up being a gimmick, which would be unfortunate.
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For long term and expensive computations this would be worth while but not for anything that is sensitive to any type of latency. I can see this being used to control weather simulations,traffic in open world games, npc interactions, and so on. Then again it could be a gimmick addition that adds nothing to the game like SimCity.
Its unlikely that they are going to do any graphics processing in the cloud. -
The difficulty is that they can't depend on all users being online, so designing a game around features dependant on the cloud reduces their audience a fair bit.
Its fine for MP games, but i think most people still expect to be able to play SP games offline, so its tricky designing those experiences to have features that are benefited by the cloud in a significant way, but also work fine without that connection.
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if only there was some sort of simulation genre or something similar where it did meaningful things other than shiny real time work.
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Yes, it's a gimmicky usage of it. It's useful, but it's something that has been done for over a decade on the PC.
There's two things that make this 'special' compared to the dedicated servers we've had for years:
#1: It is dynamically spun up as needed (something Amazon EC2 offers, but Microsoft is offering this for free).
#2: And this is being offered for free by MS.
So it's a gimmick* for now, but useful.
gimmick: a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or business.-
It has been done for a decade on the PC, but this is a thread about console gaming.
In the past publishers had to roll their own dedicated server infrastructure for their games (if they didn't just settle for the often-frustrating peer-to-peer model.) As a developer I would be excited about the prospect of it being less laborious to implement a consistent multiplayer experience - and I would also be excited about the business intelligence I'm sure MS will make available to those who leverage the platform.
As a gamer I'm just excited to be able to look forward to consistency in multiplayer performance. I'm hoping it's used for the next gen Halo, for example, because fuck hosts with shitty connections. :(-
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Have they said all xbox one games will automatically support it? Or is it something developers and publishers have to pay for? Seems crazy that MS would happily swallow that bill, I assumed it was part of the deal keeping Titanfall exclusive for now.
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Yes, they've been very clear that it will be offered for free* to Xbox One developers. There's limits to what resources they can pull for free, but they will eat those costs for the feature.
*Details unknown
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Is that what you got out of this?
To be clear: Something that has been done for years, including on consoles (see: http://www.1up.com/news/left-4-dead-xbox-360 ), being touted as a major exclusive feature is straight-up gimmick marketing.
I'm excited to see what they bring in the future, but so far, the uses have not impressed. I'm looking forward to see what other devs come up with.
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I agree, free cloud servers is neat! I'm looking forward to more creative uses than something that's been around for awhile.
Yes, consoles included: http://www.1up.com/news/left-4-dead-xbox-360 -
I think its the promise of cloud servers that are misleading, a lot of the MS publicity was promising so much about that feature, but so far its just being used to supply a fairly common place features of PC gaming. Which yes, is cool and everybody wants it, its just using the term CLOUD in and of itself feels like a gimmick.
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I don't see Sony disallowing it, they should allow their developers to shop for the best cloud services whether it be Amazon, Google or Microsoft. It's like Microsoft supporting iPads for their second screen tech.
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