Good thing we can sell our games then! Goodbye any chance of making money off DLC once the game can't be played.
MS was promoting AwesomeCloud for adding "4x the computing power" of the X1 by itself, and trying to say it will be used for other things in-game besides just dedicated servers. As one demo they had it calculating object motion in the solar system for a space simulation.
So if for example Crackdown 3 actually used the cloud for (say) enemy AI, then as soon as they stop paying the server bill that AI support evaporates.
Basically, if the hype MS was putting out ever actually came true then the usable life of even single-player games will just be a couple of years.
Oh, and as for the hypothetical single-player game using cloud functionality, that would already make it online-only, and we'd be whining about that. Seems clear to me that sane devs will have fallbacks when there's no server or internet connection, and it's hardly something to blame MS for.
Yes, cloud hosting makes perfect sense for dedicated servers because of the ability to scale up and down as needed. That's the good part. I also agree that the lower cost might mean some publishers choose to pay that server bill longer than they would have before.
Not online multiplayer though. If a single-player game uses any Azure services (except possibly save games, but maybe not even that), that part of the game will stop working.
In short, you should hope that no single-player game ever actually uses azure, unless you want to treat it as a rental that will be only semi-playable later.
a lot of people making a lot of assumptions about a lot of games and infrastructure that isn't even out yet...
There is no need to worry if a game uses the power of the cloud and those cloud services aren't available later. You can simply plug another X1 into the pass through to your current X1. Do as many times as needed for the amount of cloud power that game used. Simple enough.
a lot of people making a lot of assumptions about a lot of games and infrastructure that isn't even out yet...
What's your point? That this suddenly isn't a problem for consoles?You do realize PC FPS games used dedicated servers originally because it was unfair to host a game and play with 0 ping while someone else had 100?
Excellent job changing the subject. You've moved on from attacking the cloud to attacking a game for a design decision you didn't like. The game isn't out, neither of us can judge whether it was a good design decision in the totality of the game's experience.As for Titanfall there is zero reason they couldn't put the story on a single player campaign. They claim it "costs a lot" well, shoot...you have to pay to use those servers and you already spent millions developing the game in all likeliness.
Thank you.Yes, cloud hosting makes perfect sense for dedicated servers because of the ability to scale up and down as needed. That's the good part. I also agree that the lower cost might mean some publishers choose to pay that server bill longer than they would have before.
Only if there's no decent offline fallback. Remember, lack of that would result in a game not working or being lame day one for everyone without an internet connection. I just don't see devs going for that in the real world, especially when MS has stopped the whole 24hr check guaranteeing internet connectivity. I'm going to theorize that cloud features for single-player will be extras. Maybe they'll be really awesome extras (we can hope!), but the core of the experience will still be there without them.Not online multiplayer though. If a single-player game uses any Azure services (except possibly save games, but maybe not even that), that part of the game will stop working.
The time to worry about it is before you sink $500+ in hardware and another $500+ in games into a system.
What's your point? That this suddenly isn't a problem for consoles?
Excellent job changing the subject. You've moved on from attacking the cloud to attacking a game for a design decision you didn't like. The game isn't out, neither of us can judge whether it was a good design decision in the totality of the game's experience.
Thank you.
Only if there's no decent offline fallback. Remember, lack of that would result in a game not working or being lame day one for everyone without an internet connection. I just don't see devs going for that in the real world, especially when MS has stopped the whole 24hr check guaranteeing internet connectivity. I'm going to theorize that cloud features for single-player will be extras. Maybe they'll be really awesome extras (we can hope!), but the core of the experience will still be there without them.
And, gents, let's be real: the phenomena of servers going dark isn't exactly a console-only thing. GameSpy and Sierra WON come to mind immediately here.
Great, but Microsoft is doing something that would seem to lessen that concern, by providing a stable, cheap, long-term plan for maintaining them. That's more than Sony seems to have done. Give credit where credit is due, man.You're the one who brought up PC dedicated servers like it's some newfangled experiment or something. Nobody's attacking anything, it's simply a matter of games being online mean the game will not work at some point in the future. I've said it many times and cannot be any more clear about that point. It's a real concern.
You just love repeating this, over and over. Do I need to dig up the various ways Sony lied about the EE and Cell in the past? They overhyped. It was stupid. Everyone does it. We are trying to separate fact from fiction. Am I supposed to believe nothing anyone tells me, even when it makes perfect sense and is obviously possible technologically?What they have done is gone from "the cloud offers 4x the power to the console" to "the cloud allows us to host dedicated servers"
Game devs saying it can be done and they are doing it is far more compelling reasoning to believe in something than random people on the Internetz saying it can't because they lack imagination and technical understanding, and have tons of bias. You are perfectly correct to be suspicious of Microsoft's bizarre unsubstantiated claims of the potential of the cloud. But claiming a game dev is lying about a specific implementation they've done, that makes no sense to me.Until they can prove it works how they claim it works then there is reason to discuss it. You are sold on it and it isn't out yet based only on what you assume it will or won't do, so why can't people be the opposite?
Great, but Microsoft is doing something that would seem to lessen that concern, by providing a stable, cheap, long-term plan for maintaining them. That's more than Sony seems to have done. Give credit where credit is due, man.
You just love repeating this, over and over. Do I need to dig up the various ways Sony lied about the EE and Cell in the past? They overhyped. It was stupid. Everyone does it. We are trying to separate fact from fiction. Am I supposed to believe nothing anyone tells me, even when it makes perfect sense and is obviously possible technologically?
Game devs saying it can be done and they are doing it is far more compelling reasoning to believe in something than random people on the Internetz saying it can't because they lack imagination and technical understanding, and have tons of bias. You are perfectly correct to be suspicious of Microsoft's bizarre unsubstantiated claims of the potential of the cloud. But claiming a game dev is lying about a specific implementation they've done, that makes no sense to me.
Do you genuinely think this is what I meant? Stop trolling, and start reading. Microsoft providing an infrastructure for cheaper dedicated servers that can apparently be up longer and for cheaper. THAT is laudable, if nothing else.Credit where it's due? I do NOT credit MS for forcing any game to be online only.
Do you genuinely think this is what I meant? Stop trolling, and start reading.
Sure. Someone who makes inflammatory off-topic remarks in order to generate a response. That appears to be what you're doing, given that you're not even responding to what I'm writing... you're just shitting on Microsoft over and over in order to get a response. Of course, trolls go away if you don't respond... so adieu.Trolling? Do you even know what a troll is?
It probably won't shock anyone, but MS charges the publishers to use AwesomeCloud, including for dedicated servers:
http://www.respawn.com/news/lets-talk-about-the-xbox-live-cloud/
"Most importantly to us, Microsoft priced it so that its far more affordable than other hosting options their goal here is to get more awesome games, not to nickel-and-dime developers. So because of this, dedicated servers are much more of a realistic option for developers who dont want to make compromises on their player experience, and it opens up a lot more things that we can do in an online game."
That means:
- both users and publishers are paying MS for you to go online.
- once a game stops selling, expect the AwesomeCloud dedicated hosting and any other features to be killed. So if you want to play a game 5 years after release, you'd better hope that AwesomeCloud was not used for anything important.
Maybe by then MS or publishers will offer some way for people to pay to keep the AwesomeCloud server instances running for a game, but that's doubtful.
But, but, but, but, it's on Azure! Servers will never shut down because it's the cloud!
I am not arguing they didn't overhype the cloud. Sony, MS, and Nintendo all have a lovely history of overhyping, so I take no offense. I am saying that Titanfall demonstrates a real advantage of it.
So you're essentially arguing you don't get much from dedicated servers unless there's game world persistence. Let's tell all those PC FPS folks how misguided they've been... or not.
Here's how the cloud benefits you over a more traditional dedicated server infrastructure in Titanfall's case:
1. Cheaper: devs are more likely to use the dedicated server feature instead of shunting you to P2P hell
2. More flexible: less chance (no chance?) of day one fails because servers get overloaded. In a non-cloud architecture, you are limited to your hardware. In the cloud, you have de facto limitless hardware (sorry, but you're not overwhelming Azure, Amazon Cloud, or any of the other major players. They're simply too big now.).
3. More scalable: there's no point where server maintenance costs for a single server running just a few games become too high. In the cloud, you simply keep renting less and less CPU time and memory. I find it ironic that you guys whine about things turning off - this level of scalability makes it way more likely they will continue for longer periods of time than in a traditional dedicated server architecture, because there's no fixed cost at the bottom end.
SimCity fell over because they were NOT doing this, FYI. Seriously, read the damn article and then respond. They do an amazing job of laying out the advantages in this particular use case.
Oh, and as for the hypothetical single-player game using cloud functionality, that would already make it online-only, and we'd be whining about that. Seems clear to me that sane devs will have fallbacks when there's no server or internet connection, and it's hardly something to blame MS for.