News Microsoft Admits Cloud Gaming Is Sloppy For Now

[Admin]

Microsoft expects console and PC gamers to keep downloading games but does not expect them to switch to cloud gaming.

Microsoft Admits Cloud Gaming Is Sloppy For Now : Read more

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

At least, this is what the software giant wrote in response to the U.K.'s Competition and Market Authority this week.

So the only reason MS said that cloud gaming is in its infancy is because they did it to appease UK regulators for their Activision/Blizzard takeover.

The goal of Microsoft is to make it seems like they're just another company, and not the giant US behemoth controlling the whole tech sector in Europe together with Google and Amazon.

 

[thestryker]

So the only reason MS said that cloud gaming is in its infancy is because they did it to appease UK regulators for their Activision/Blizzard takeover.

The goal of Microsoft is to make it seems like they're just another company, and not the giant US behemoth controlling the whole tech sector in Europe together with Google and Amazon.

To be fair it is in its infancy and the only standalone attempt (Stadia) failed miserably and the ones still around are effectively value added services.

Microsoft is hardly an innocent, but the CMA has it bad for CoD and nothing else (given the size of the ABK portfolio how could other things not come up) which makes them very hard to take seriously as a regulatory anything.

 

[hotaru251]

So the only reason MS said that cloud gaming is in its infancy is because they did it to appease UK regulators for their Activision/Blizzard takeover.

except its true.

until we have better mapped networks (i.e. faster speeds and fewer stops & possibly dedicated lanes) cloud gaming isnt gonna work.

only place in world it "could" work atm is S. Korea as they have extremely fast net and its a small palce so if host was in S.Korea itself would be fine i believe.

but on a nation like NA/Europe/etc thats multitudes larger?
good luck even in next 20 yrs given ISP's refuse to spread faster mroe reliable coverage & hosts would need to have servers set up a lot more palces (so ur not hoppign as far away)

The goal of Microsoft is to make it seems like they're just another company, and not the giant US behemoth controlling the whole tech sector in Europe together with Google and Amazon.

except they don't even IF they get approved.

AVB is large, but its by far nowhere near a monopoly.

Sony, Nintendo, etc all contend for market.

Sony's entire "buy a PS" is due to exclusives...they've done it for ages now.

The only reason they want to stop MS is due to the "chance" (its low) they'd ditch PS for future cod as its basically their biggest thing.

MS does very few "exclusives".

it releases most games on PC/XB/Nintendo/mobile/PS.

The "real" reason Sony is agaisnt it is Gamepass.

For the consumer Gamepass is unbeatable.
for devs? Gamepass is beneficial in spreading userbase & can utilize MS's servers (which can be hit or miss mind you)
playing games on console/pc & streaming to your new smart tv's w/o needing console is how it SHOULD be.

For sony? thats a threat.
They tried their PS+ pass or w/e they called it and it just lacks offerings (and requires console still) vs how much u get via gamepass.

Sony has very few titles to justify the cost of console.


MS will say beneficial stuff ofc (its business)
Sony will say negatives ofc (again..business)

Devs honestly benefit more siding with MS (as MS can help their games reach wider audience & thus mroe $ for the devs)

but in NO way does MS getting AVB "monopolize" cloud gaming as its decades from being viable for anythign requiring low latency & stable connection.

nor do they control whole tech sector.

as an OS? Linux & iOS (and linux is more used in business on high end (servers and stuff)
as a console maker? Nintendo, Sony, Valve, the mobile market...so plenty of competition.
game devs? yes, AVB and MS have a lot of ip's but by far not a majority.
They basically gave up on VR/AR (and even if stayed still bunch of players there)
....data collecting? as bad as it is...they are by FAR not the only nor the largest.


MS gettign AVB isnt bad like Nvidia wanting ARM (as that basically would of effected the ENTIRE ARM reliant field which is massive).

 

[InvalidError]

Cloud-hosted games may work for "tourist mode" exploration games where response time is of little or no importance. For faster-paced content where the extra 20-30ms of round-trip time over the internet, through the hosting farm, through video encoders, back through the internet, through video decoders and finally out to screen accounts for a disproportionate amount of the 30-50ms input-to-screen local latency, cloud gaming is a likely no-go no matter how much further it may improve.

 

[DavidLejdar]

Yeah, the latency seems to be quite an issue. On the other hand, perhaps it would be technically possible to develop a buffer (even in form of a PCIe card or similar for console, of which the gamers are arguably more of an audience for a game streaming service) - a buffer, as in when e.g. turning in a first-person game, that the graphics for that would already be on the local device? That way the environment would always be pre-buffered, and multi-player actions would go through the server as usual anyhow.

In any case, it sure doesn't sound as if there would be a huge improvement in such regard in the very near future.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Cloud Gaming is also the doorway for big Gaming Publishers to strip away ownership of Physical Media.

Something these Game Publishers would LOVE to do.

Sorry, I want ownership of my games for the rest of eternity.

I hope the laws of Reality/Physics kicks your arse and makes Cloud Gaming Non-Viable for the rest of eternity.

 

[InvalidError]

Sorry, I want ownership of my games for the rest of eternity.

I wish for the same, though it may be difficult if not impossible with more games having components that require an always-on connection and are effectively dead when the game developer or publisher decides to axe the servers.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I wish for the same, though it may be difficult if not impossible with more games having components that require an always-on connection and are effectively dead when the game developer or publisher decides to axe the servers.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of those aspects. I miss the good ole days of "Self Hosting" servers in the 90's

 

[husker]

What baffles me is why anyone thought it could work in the first place for something other than turn based (or very relaxed input timing) games. The only thing that makes sense to me is marketing departments and clueless executives going over the heads of computer science professionals to tout this nonsense. I've posted (and others probably as well) over a year ago that the latency issue alone makes it a fool's errand. Latency exists, not because we haven't written the correct bit of tricky code, but because it is a fundamental part of reality. It's like someone telling you they have a great service if they can only solve the issue of gravity existing on Earth. Why even bother listening to anything else about their pitch until that pesky anti-gravity thing is for real.

 

[JamesJones44]

They're not wrong about this. Until they solve some of the latency issues there is no way this is a drop in replacement for a console/downloaded games.

Also, I don't really see how this is related to Activision. If Microsoft were to somehow succeed with xCloud in the way Netflix did with video streaming, what they have as exclusive titles isn't going to matter. It would put immense pressure on Sony and Nintendo without it.

 

[DougMcC]

Like a lot of others, I don't really get why it isn't obvious to people that this technology isn't just in its infancy, it's provably impossible to make work. The speed of light is what it is. You'd have to build data centers all over the place, which would ruin the pricing model.

 

[InvalidError]

Like a lot of others, I don't really get why it isn't obvious to people that this technology isn't just in its infancy, it's provably impossible to make work. The speed of light is what it is. You'd have to build data centers all over the place, which would ruin the pricing model.

The speed of light isn't really an issue: a 1000km round-trip only adds 0.1ms, which is insignificant. Each switch and router in-between adds 10-100us per port of store-and-forward delays, so there may be 1ms of extra latency for that.

Where remote gaming gets its big hit is that video encoders cannot start encoding until frames are completed, compressed video data for the frame cannot be sent out until the frame encode has completed and video output at your end cannot be updated until all of the compressed video data for that frame has reached you and been decoded either. Even with super-fast encoders, decoders and 2.5Gbps internet connections, I doubt the encode-decode penalty can be reduced to less than 10ms.