Microsoft: Cloud Will Quadruple Power of Xbox One

[Dede Riswan]

So we need an always on connection to fully unleash the power of xbox one?

 

[hiruu]

Interesting, but Microsoft NEEDS to set-up an incubation team to work of this, at the very least. I would suggest a large team, or even a studio, completely dedicated to a project to showcase exactly what this vision is. The should probably do the same for a core-type Kinect game as well, since this provide gamers with dividends, rather than waiting for a developer to step up to the plate. Time will tell, if this is just a cloud dream or not.

 

[dozerman]

Apparently everyone on the planet has third generation Google fiber now...

 

[volkov956]

Not impressed gl with that

 

[liquidchild]

"This just in!!!! XboxOne can do the dishes, suck your junk, and fly to the moon on one tank of gas"....... What a load of poo this is turning out to be.

 

[FAMDUCK]

The bandwidth required to send data back and forth between 3 virtual consoles is staggering. With most home internet connections, the average speed is 3-5 Mbps and maximum speeds up to 15 Mbps... and this is only download speeds. With the way this cloud system is supposed to work, you would need a very fast uplink speed as well. Most home ISPs are only rated in the 2-3 Mbps range. There are some ISPs such as OMGFast which offer 50 Mbps, but only in certain areas. Also, 15 Mbps is only 1.8 megabytes per second. How much more detail can you add over the internet with only that much bandwidth? I don't think that is enough to utilize even one virtual console at a time let alone three. But who knows, average internet speeds might increase significantly over this console's lifespan. And even if it doesn't, Microsoft will have the infrastructure to use this technology in a future console or even in some other non-gaming application.

 

[thor220]

This is funny. They want to splice a live hardware render between the cloud and the hardware. I know that even sli has issues so how bad will the micro-stutter be when you have to really on the internet? You will be missing graphical effects, models. and possible input lag on half of the frames. What happens when the system can't get internet, no gameplay?
I also don't see how microsoft will foot the cost of the massive amount of servers they "claim" to have. I'm calling BS on this whole thing unless they raise gold membership to something like $25 a month. Otherwise the console would not be profitable for them

 

[CarolKarine]

great. this'll be useful in pretty much only japan, which has sony rolling out 2gigabit internet.... but of course, japan doesn't like the xbox anyways.

 

[lpedraja2002]

Cloud computing = always online gaming?
If certain games were to implement this then I assume you would need a stable and powerful broadband connection for it to work.

 

[Soma42]

What a load of crap. To hit 30-60fps you need a latency of 16-33ms. There's no way the internet connection will be that good for most people in the first place, let alone for their "cloud service" to do any computing. What a load of crap...

 

[pacomac]

Is it April the 1st today?

 

[StormOfRazors]

So what happens if you want to play a game offline? You get reduced performance or you simply cant play entirely? is that where XBOX games are going, where there are going to be little stickers on games that say "requires internet connection to access the cloud in order to function"? And what happens when the cloud goes down, you cant play your game? Im not hating on consoles, it was how i originally got into gaming, but there are so many flaws in this idea.... Microsoft, i might buy one of your controllers and stick it into my PC for racing games, but that is it.

 

[Benihana]

"Is my TV going to be powerful enough?"
Mine's got a Hemi in it, what's yours got?

 

[tiret]

this does sound very promising - if true. too bad those in bandwidth-poor areas won't be able to enjoy it. not everyone on earth has 50mbps uncapped lines. user experience will not be equal.

 

[fictitious1]

This will be interesting especially for folks who are on a capped data plan for internet. Streaming TV, Movies, and now gaming is going to kill peoples limits really quick. I will be interested to see some numbers as this gets fleshed out. How much data is being sent, say in an hour of gaming etc. Might be cool for parents too though as a parental feature. Mom says, "I'll turn off your HD Xbox if you don't .... -"

 

[billgatez]

So you are telling me that a 8 core CPU and a Mid range AMD GPU cant do this locally? Good luck getting mutly platform game developer to use this.

 

[genz]

Sorry, theres a huge flaw in one fatal sentence in this article.
"This allows developers to assume that there's roughly three times the resources immediately available to their game"
If immediately means a quarter of a second, that's 15 frames of gameplay latency @60fps. 30 if it's duplex (if it relies on my input like OnLive/Gaikai).
It's all well and good having 3 XBO's worth of power, but servers have never been demanding because broadband has never been fat enough to transmit large amounts of detail data consistently. Ultimately I would prefer twice the power here than 3 times the power at Redmond any day.

 

[thecouchguy]

Voumetric lag. "without adding lag to the actual gameplay", believe it when I see it. Australia hmmm, Sunshine Coast hinterland with the only broadband to be currently radio broadband (at least where my mate lives). Still, I admit the tech could be exiting for those with fiber optic.

 

[cats_Paw]

Trusting someone elses computer power has not worked well in the past...

 

[genz]

im pretty sure quadruple is an overstatement. I can see them using the xbox for all the heavy stuff in the game and merging your game with a cloud based system similar to onlive to do additional processing. but that would require a damn good internet connection to be on ALWAYS and would handicap the the system when you lost internet connection mid game. imagine if a dev chooses to do textures or lighting specifically for the cloud to process, and you little brother starts to youtube and torrent the living hell out of your connection. if this statement is as Im seeing it, then I see it backfiring horrendously.
if the way I see it is wrong, then ignore my comment xD

It doesn't even work that far. Think about it, when you click on a page of tomshardware, how long does it take for that page to appear? That's your latency (x2 for you request to be sent to the server) plus rendering time, minus all the stuff you already have (like the logo image from the last page). It's probably pretty fast, until you think of how many frames of a game would go by in that space of time.

ANYTHING graphical is impossible over the network, unless you want to be sent a compressed video rather than the actual data... and that is slow and ugly as you will ALWAYS have huge lag.

 

[ahmedomran]

I wonder how are they going to use cloud in games to process the graphics, etc.. What if the user doesn't have internet connection ? Will he get a different level of graphics detail? or he won't be able to play the game at all??? please explain.

 

[Stimpack]

It sickens me that they're allowed to say this blatant BS.

 

[somebodyspecial]

ROFL...Game devs won't use a cloud when not everyone has access to it. Unless MS is going to pick up the bill for countries where bandwidth and the cost of said bandwidth sucks, this is a no go for devs. Devs will create games for what is IN THE BOX that they can rely on. This is why PS4 will clobber MS. Cloud is MS's excuse for not upping the box's specs from the get go.
Personally, I will never use a cloud for anything. You can't have my data, my privacy or anything else I think you should be fired if you authorize your company to use a cloud for any company data. PRIVATE cloud ok (behind firewalls etc), but public? You must be smoking crack.

 

[cats_Paw]

So im guessing if that console is 40 times faster, and battlefield 3 runned on Xbox 360 at 30 FPS, you will get 1200 fps on battlefield 3 on that xbox? If there is a human naive enought to belive that, please tell me where (if its a guy ill scam him, if i woman...nvm here).

But im sure 14 year old kids will belive this and "ask their parents" to buy this.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

So foliage and fog, similar to physx effects is what the clouds going to offer, tho you wont need it for the game, interesting