A just found this article on the net from a couple of months ago:
http://www.developer-tech.com/news/2013/aug/22/xbox-one-actu…
Can't say I'm surprised really.
M$ has the dollars to spend whereas Sony is verging on bankruptcy..
Good Read: Xbox One actually more powerful than PS4
L[Deactivated] on 26/11/2013 - 09:11
Comments
If we are going to link speculative articles, XBox is going to be sold off anyway:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/stephen-elop-ceo-microsoft-…
But on the decline is NOT the same as 'verging on bankruptcy'.
Speculative articles you say? You could also link the articles about how to Wii-U is going to be cancelled off altogether because it has no games and is selling poorly.
Which is what we were all saying about the 3DS 12 months ago and look at that snowballing mo-fo.
Yes I realize Nintendo has no place in this discussion. I was just referencing current events in gaming and waving around my massive Nintendo fanboy flag.
Apart from highlighting Speculation my comment was actually on point. If I wanted an XB1 or PS4 and was worried about their life time, I would have a lot more concern over the sale of Xbox than Sony going backrupt.
In in general I'm not a fan of the PS4 for being spectatularly 'blah'. But amazingly the XB1 fails to beat this low bar.
Be like me and hate both because neither of them have half decent release titles.
OMG MADDEN! OMG NBA! OMG FORZA! YOU ALMOST CAN'T TELL THAT RACING AND SPORT GAMES WERE ALREADY OPTIMIZED TO GAMEPLAY PERFECTION IN THE PREVIOUS GENERATION! GOTTA GIT DEM EXTRA PIXELS!
I think I'm the only person left who buys a console for games, rather than for another toy to look at Facebook with or watch movies on.
(Because in my own opinion, The Last Of Us and Grand Theft Auto (less so) proved we don't NEED a new console generation. All we need are good games for the consoles we all already have.)
i agree that the launch titles are pretty sub par - but i dont know what you expect.
It happens every launch and we have to give it time for the good ones to come out - for they simply cant rush the game releases (this is a good thing - dont want half-assed games) just to meet the console release deadline.
Personally after weighing up both options i think im going to go for the PS4 because of personal preference. But i will only get it some time after christmas when both consoles have a decent library of games.
@FrankMcFuzz … yep im with you.. i'm sticking with my current gen consoles for good while longer then i'll see if the new ones are worth owning. I'll let others go through the early teething problems of new products.. :)
There is no point in arguing which console is more powerful specially when there hardware is so damn close to being identical. im from a Nintendo mindset its nice that the games pretty but the game play and game design (Nintendo games) and for me the story (ME1,2,3, Uncharted, last of us etc) is the important aspects that i care about and i think it's what makes games popular and therefore the consoles gain popularity.
I guess i was lucky to grow up while consoles evolved (late 80's to now) so for me being able to display things in better HD is a moot argument if the games are terrible.
yes i own a heck of a lot of consoles :P
That article seems pretty unscientific. I wouldn't take it seriously. Instead you should look up some numbers to see how well Sony is doing.
the comments are more informative than the article.
That's how I feel when I read "news" of any type.
I'll believe it when it happens
Whilst this may be true, I reckon this will only truly come into play for Aus once faster internet (i.e. NBN FTTP or cable) becomes widely available, i know my area does not have either of those and i have a 600kbps d/l and 100kbps u/l. At this current point in time, this does not seem feasible, at least for me, since using cloud is more of a torture then a gift.
Not sure how much speed you need for Cloud computing but i'd imagine it needs to be as fast as cable.
Even ignoring that Microsoft still need expensive cloud servers in every country and then have to find a way to make all that money worth it.
Problem is this feature will never be used by 3rd party devs.
Read the comments, ignore the article.
Xbot's say whaaa?
Its not even possible right now for Microsoft to stream games off the internet because everyone is forgetting that azure has no graphics cards. So really buying a company that already does this is better, and that story about sony going bankrupt is nonsense. Also its incredbly slow and I have fast internet so there is really not that much future in cloud computing for consoles at all
(I have a Windows Azure membership and it does not have GPUs and Microsoft even s aid they dont give GPUs)
Just My 2 Cents
I think you are missing the point. The idea is not that they are rendering an existing game and streaming it to you, but that they are running the game's back end in the cloud.
This sounds all well and good, but ultimately just results in what have have called a game 'server' for decades.
The problem is that with the latency you still have to do most video audio and physics locally. Things like the AI can be off loaded, and perhaps will be, but it just means that you are locked into having a good internet connection for marginal advantage.
And the idea that bots running on an internet server is anything new is just marketting.
Just to explain…
Game servers today offer almost no resource saving for the client, no CPU or GPU reduction except for AI Bots saving CPU.
The problem is this doesn't apply to most games, its possible to build a game from the ground up using dedicated servers controlling AI Bots however its not going to work properly.
Most game developers can't get their games working properly when running everything clientside.
I've gone into more detail below but on 'build a game from the ground up' and 'Most game developers can't get their games working properly' I will add that UE3 already has very impressive and easy game sync build right in. You pretty much just nominate if any given code is run on the server, the client, or both. All assets are kept in sync automagically.
What you just described has nothing to do with the xbox one feature however.
How can you know? Even if for some stupid reason you needed to use a custom API, no reason it couldn't be built into UE4. That would certainly cover a large volume of games.
I know as much as you do, nothing.
My point is that that it won't work and I'm saying why it won't work.
Anyone with decent computer and video game knowledge knows that this is a gimmick.
- Games and their engines will have to be redesigned to use this properly, there goes 99% of games that we all play.
Your not going to see this happen because the development cost won't be worth it.
- When you do see this feature used, its going to be a gimmick, why is this?
The majority of calculating could have been done in the loading screen. Even if Microsoft paid a huge amount of money to have their cloud located in Australia you would get 30-80ms depending on which state you are in.
Now take 50ms, add the time it takes for your console to send the information, then the time it takes for it to receive it. You are already at 2000-10000ms+ depending on what information you are sending. The cloud needs t know what to calculate, if it didn't need to know this then your console could have calculated it in the loading screen.
Take Battlefield 4 for example, a game that has a legitimate reason for high CPU usage, none of the calculations can be done through the cloud as it all has to be calculated instantly. Do you really think anyone wants to play a game where you shoot an RPG at a building and the debris doesn't fall down for 1-5 seconds?
Multiplayer - You can't sync cloud data with client data while syncing that data with other multipler users and having it 100% accurate while having a game that actually works.
So they either don't sync that data with other players which will result in a hilarious mess of glitching everywhere.
Or you can put the entire game in the cloud which will require costly World of Warcraft type servers for each game, this will never happen.
- In response to Bruce, acting as a game server would be the worst way to do it. Game servers do very little work for the client except managing other players and BOT AI.
Bot AI in the cloud would save CPU Usage, however it would require too much information to be uploaded for this to work.
Your console will need to tell Microsoft where your 50 physics objects are, all the actions you are performing like throwing grenades, you will also have to upload the physics data for where that grenade will bounce. And the list goes on.
Now imagine a strategy game where you have 1000 units on the map performing separate tasks, not going to happen here either.
I could go on… again this feature is next to useless except for some tech demo games to show that it can calculate a bunch of useless tasks that nobody would ever use in a real game.
Sorry, your general idea is fine, but I have to pick on your explanation.
Now take 50ms, add the time it takes for your console to send the information, then the time it takes for it to receive it. You are already at 2000-10000ms+ depending on what information you are sending.
I have no idea where you are getting this extra 1.95-9.95 seconds. If you are suggesting this is due to volume of data then this is a bandwith issue rather than a latency one. Clearly currently real time games manage to transfer game state in much less time than this, and game assets wouldn't need to be transfered as it can be safety assumed to exist on both ends (including any initialisation at loading).
Multiplayer - You can't sync cloud data with client data while syncing that data with other multipler users and having it 100% accurate while having a game that actually works.
This is exactly how multiplayer has worked since the mid 90s. All systems run their own physics and they adjust to match the servers view of the world whenever they get an update, which is why you see characters jumping around in high lag, though better modern games have very little of this because the local prediction is usually very close to the server's version of events.
Or you can put the entire game in the cloud which will require costly World of Warcraft type servers for each game, this will never happen.
Why not? Not just WoW, but SC2, all these MOBA games, world of tanks and heaps of others work like this.
Bot AI in the cloud would save CPU Usage, however it would require too much information to be uploaded for this to work.
Again, this is exactly how games have worked ever since people run third party bots in Quake 1.
Your console will need to tell Microsoft where your 50 physics objects are, all the actions you are performing like throwing grenades, you will also have to upload the physics data for where that grenade will bounce. And the list goes on.
You only have to upload the command, the results should be predictable (unless other player's commands change the result). This of course still means you have to have at least a rough simulation locally, which is the actual issue.
Now imagine a strategy game where you have 1000 units on the map performing separate tasks, not going to happen here either.
See also: SC2. Really not a big deal actually, this is where this model works best, particularly if you offload the AI (can even offload individual unit AI, not just the computer 'player').
I hope you realise that you are not sending the server "what is 1+1" and then downloading the answer 2 from the server. Cloud calculations that actually will save resources for the console will be a lot more data. That combined with latency and syncing is what the problem is.
Thats incorrect, (in Counter-strike etc for example) the dedicated server dictates everything, the clients tell the server what they are doing and the dedicated server updates their position etc. This uses very little resources and does not have a 3rd party cloud server telling everyone different stories and messing up what was once simple.
WoW is very very expensive to run. MOBA is much much cheaper because you are 10 champions, minions and spells.
Thats excluding the fact that my point is talking about First Person Shooter games, which is the biggest console game seller and the main reason the idea won't work.
- My point is that bots in multiplayer games are relatively straight forward compared to many single player campaigns that use AI, as mentioned it would require a complete rewrite or it would not be very useful.
Why bother using it for AI bots in multiplayer, people don't play with AI bots, they play with people!
What you are saying does not work, if the client can't predict anything and has to get it from the cloud,the delay will be huge in the example I gave, I think you are failing to understand the complexities of it.
SC2 does not use cloud based calculations similar to the Xbox One feature.
Are you suggesting you offload the unit AI for pathfinding? There is no cpu usage saving there.
SC2 does not save any resources currently and there is very little if anything that can be saved from moving to the cloud.
Think of it this way, if your console can handle versing 3 other players in multiplayer SC2 in a huge fight, it can handle the 1% of people who want to vs the AI.
I hope you realise that you are not sending the server "what is 1+1" and then downloading the answer 2 from the server. Cloud calculations that actually will save resources for the console will be a lot more data. That combined with latency and syncing is what the problem is.
Not sure what you are saying here, yes the models I talk about use the server for validation not computation savings. This doesn't mean that there is a data size problem, there is definately a latency problem though. You need to have at least a 1+1 = 2ish calculation locally, but in complicated physics a '2ish' calculation (say single precision rather than double) may save a lot of time.
Thats incorrect, (in Counter-strike etc for example) the dedicated server dictates everything, the clients tell the server what they are doing and the dedicated server updates their position etc. This uses very little resources and does not have a 3rd party cloud server telling everyone different stories and messing up what was once simple.
I don't understand your distinction. First if CS has a server telling everyone everything, did you say bandwidth/latency makes this not work? '3rd party cloud server' is just 'server', the extra words are just for marketting.
WoW is very very expensive to run. MOBA is much much cheaper because you are 10 champions, minions and spells.
But you run many copies of those for all the games going on at once, which is what I thought your point was. If MS wants to waste $100M on controller R&D, and want to get into the cloud market, why not waste money here anyway? Remember that you are paying for this with XBox Live, might as well use the money for something?
Thats excluding the fact that my point is talking about First Person Shooter games, which is the biggest console game seller and the main reason the idea won't work.
All the same things apply to FPS games.
My point is that bots in multiplayer games are relatively straight forward compared to many single player campaigns that use AI, as mentioned it would require a complete rewrite or it would not be very useful.
I don't understand this argument at all. How are multiplayer bots any different to single player IA? How will it require a rewrite when almost all FPS engines support remote bots already?
Why bother using it for AI bots in multiplayer, people don't play with AI bots, they play with people!
For example something like Left 4 Dead, or perhaps to put a group of players against a whole army.
What you are saying does not work, if the client can't predict anything and has to get it from the cloud,the delay will be huge in the example I gave, I think you are failing to understand the complexities of it.
The client can predict lots. As I mentioned this is standard practice. Most of the time everything in the game continues to do whatever it was doing last (see also: newtons laws). Every 50ms you can get corrections to this concept.
SC2 does not use cloud based calculations similar to the Xbox One feature.
Given that we don't know what the XBox One feature is that is a tricky statement. It certain does a heap of stuff server side. Note that I'm not making the claim that this makes a big impact on client side calculations.
Are you suggesting you offload the unit AI for pathfinding? There is no cpu usage saving there.
Well there is, good pathfinding is actually quite a pain, particularly if whatever game you are playing has a smarm (perhaps hundreds of flying units?)
SC2 does not save any resources currently and there is very little if anything that can be saved from moving to the cloud.
Agreed.
Good pathfinding is based on the developers doing a good job not CPU resources.
Dedicated servers today save little resources, the cloud based servers in question will be calculating things completely different to what dedicated servers will. Thats the point, to save a lot of CPU work.
Again my point is: what will save them a lot of CPU can't be done without wasting a lot of money that nobody is going to want to do.
Microsoft are going to make a technology demo to impress everyone and then nobody is going to use it because it won't work properly.
Microsoft shills on ozbargain? Who'd a thunk it.
Lol that article is a joke written by some hack. Even the comments there are in jest of it.
btw he forgot to mention that MS is on the verge of getting a new CEO, and depending on who, (Elop from Nokia) there's strong rumours they may sell off the "xbox" part of the company.
So much for financial backing. Id be worried if i was an xbox1 fan.The best part of the console is clearly the kinect implementation, nothing else is even potentially superior/different to the ps4.
How long have you been using the DS4 controller and what do you find sucks about it?
/@All
Stop being so petty minded and just enjoy the console you decide to buy, ripping into the other consoles won't make your one any better at all and all that negativity does nobody any good.How long have you been using the DS4 controller and what do you find sucks about it?
Assuming you mean PS4, 0 hours and 0 minutes.
DS4= Dual Shock 4 which im guessing would still be 0 hours and 0 minutes.
Beakeroo's point= How can you judge something you have never touched?
Correct Britta. This thread is a hate filled fanboi's wet dream. I'll leave it to them.
I'm not a fan of either console, nor do I have any immediate plans to buy them.
How can you judge something you have never touched?
DS3 traits?
What are you on about? Never noticed the shape change from DS3 to DS4? Vastly different hand hold mold. Enjoy being in a cave you fanboy.
I've tested out the DS4 @ EB Expo, its not too bad, an improvement on the DS3 definitely… the shape is slightly easier to grip. I personally only ever used the XBOX controller once or twice and it was kinda awkward but still usable… probably cause you get used to whichever controller you use most.
BTW, i don't plan on getting either consoles… PC all the way for me now lol
Ah another PS vs XBOX thread - the generation of consoles change but the arguments are always the same.
I haven't bought either but will probably eventually get both, once I can get around to finishing off the previous gen console games I have lying around… which probably won't happen until I get bored of Dota2.
hardware does not mean everything
at one stage sega and nintendo got state of the art hardware (better than sony), not many programmer/ developer wants to program for them
and they lost miserably to SonyMy son picked up his Xbox One console on the release day. It was a pre-order. Took it home, hooked it up and……nothing happened.
He attempted to load the initial update and 15 hours later……….still nothing.
Returned the console to the retailer thinking it was faulty and was given a replacement. Took it home, set it up and…..it took 4 hours for the initial update but at least it did the update.
Placed a game disc into the drive and………….nothing happened. Reboot, tried again. Nothing! Reboot again, placed the game disc in and 5 hours later…..still nothing.
I returned the console to the retailer and got a full refund.
I will never touch another Microsoft console again. EVER!
We'll try PS4.
you sure you got the right one? as the product or the X or the box stated, only the right one will work…… and that's only one, obviously you got two which is not one……
hence Xbox Onei find the person who negged me lack of humour disturbing…….. (as per my avatar slogon)
Launch Gen Consoles will always have issues. This Gen is a dream compared to the 360 Launch and the PS3 launch to a lesser degree. But don't let that stop you from getting a PS4. In an underpowered generation it has the more powerful GPU, isn't burdened by the need to run 3 OSes, has the better memory layout and GDDR5. Online play being behind a paywall is probably the most Sony can be criticized for at this launch.
I was talking to a JB employee about the XBONE and he didn't mention anything about that… what he DID mention was that it took ages to install the game onto the system, presumably because it installed the whole game instead of just some chunks like our current PS3 and 360.
THe XBone implementation of play-while-you-install is inferior to the PS4 (which works really well from what I've heard), but honestly who cares. I've put up with installation times since 90s pc gaming.
They are actuallly pretty similar. The xbox downloads patches during its install process at 1%, so it seems to take a lot longer (esp when there is a 6gig patch like forza).
I bought the xbox 360 on launch. Had it RROD on me 6 times. 4 times i sent it back to M$ in Sydney. Other 2 times i had a mate fix it. I will never buy a console at launch. I'll wait till the 2nd series comes out.
Next gen will be all cloud based streaming, games like BF4 already are dependent on your Network connection for performance so it's only logical to sell a really cheap thin client as a your home gaming machine and connect to a powerful server running everything
and connect to a powerful server running everything
Opening the door to subscription gaming, cha-ching.
The door is wide open and the horse has already bolted.
Aah, the future. I remember using citrix winframe years ago. Central server, thin clients, the new way.
What a piece of crap that was. The lag, even for things like email and word, was terrible. And that was running it in the same building. It became almost un-useable when running a thin client in a different state.
My home internet is way slower than 100mb lan.So I don't care if the consoles go to the cloud for their processing. At present PC's will offer the alternative of sufficient grunt for a reasonable price.
I have a ps3 I was using for media playback and games. I don't game so much now but use a pc media server every day. So I already have a pc connected to the tv. I hope the console makers realize that soon it will not just be weirdo's sitting in their bedrooms playing pc games but that their competition is PC's already sitting under tv's doing stuff like recording tv, playing movies, and soon monitoring and controlling electricity/home automation.
I think you made a mistake OP. Title should be "Bad Read" ;)
Desync is fun.
I'm waiting to see which console ends up having the superior online network.
Sortof Regret getting the ps3 because Xbox live is far superior for online gaming. Yes I know you paid but for me it would have been worth it for more comp and the games I played.
I believe proper cloud functionality is another Gen away, especially for Australia. However, the online multiplayer experience will be the key for success now.
'especially for Australia'
Yeah, and even that may depend on what the boffins in Canberra decide to squash in the NBN
This could be the most stupid post to of ever graced Ozbargain.
This is pure unproven hype. EA tried to claim Sim City did all it's work in the cloud. Really it's just a marketting tactic until proven otherwise.
MS is certianly spending lots of money ($100M on controller R&D) which is coming from other parts of the company. Not sure were you are getting the bankruptcy part from.
As for the 'good read' part, the comments are more informative than the article.