4 years later, Xbox One and the power of the cloud(quotes inside)

So four years later here we are folks. Did Microsoft delivered on its lofty promises about the cloud?

Booty added that things like physics modeling, fluid dynamics, and cloth motion were all prime examples of effects that require a lot of up-front computation that could be handled in the cloud without adding any lag to the actual gameplay. And the server resources Microsoft is putting toward these calculations will be much greater than a local Xbox One could handle on its own. "A rule of thumb we like to use is that [for] every Xbox One available in your living room we’ll have three of those devices in the cloud available," he said.

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Higher fidelity game experiences – As I mentioned before, cloud compute can enable developers to offload computations for all sorts of environmental elements. In a typical game development scenario, the game creator needs to balance resource allocation across each area – world management, rendering, controls, networking, lighting, physics, AI, as well as networking and multiplayer. Balancing the local computing resources for all of these elements often results in developers making tradeoffs that result in more focus on core gameplay, and less on environments, NPC and other elements of world fidelity. However, when cloud compute is available to support the various computationally-intensive elements of the game, these kinds of tradeoffs become much easier for developers to make. Games can afford to provide higher fidelity worlds and deeply intelligent NPC AI all at the same time. These experiences could only be accomplished by leveraging the resources of servers.

And finally...

On-demand compute improves game availability – With all of the potentially interesting things that can be accomplished with Xbox Live Compute, one of the most important things is that the resources (e.g. servers) are available when gamers need it most. It is the geographic availability of this service, and its elastic scalability that enables gamers to connect to an available server and play without experiencing busy or unavailable servers. This ensures that games meet the changing demands of their player communities for compute, and gamers experience optimal connectivity based upon their geographic location. Additionally, it means that game creators can be assured that the server capacity they need, in the appropriate geographies, will be there when they need it.

Source

Not just lived up to the promises but rather they greatly exceeded'em. :O

Add Mighty X1X to the mix and my goodness... MasterRace confirmed. :P

I guess I don't really know.

Cloud saves are pretty cool though and lag is minimal. Bone X tends to be a little iffy on WiFi but I think that will be ironed out with updates.

Well maybe if people accepted Microsofts proposal for an online only DRM console in 2013, then we would have Cloud Power by now. Cloud processing is probably not available for non-first party developers, they really cut the cord on that when the whole always online dream of theirs went away and there's also a reason why MS show off Crackdown 3 Cloud destruction so early in it's life time, that game went into hiatus because MS was following Don Mattricks Cloud PR at the time.

Hey, it helped make Titanfall possible--which gave us the magnificent Titanfall 2. So there's one perk.

@shellcase86: Amen, Titanfall 2 is the best FPS of this gen. The single player is very memorable as well, worth a few playthroughs.

The cloud power for gaming is a novelty. Maybe the least relevant use case for cloud computing.

I think we have seen it's just a marketing buzz word when it comes to gaming.

The power of the cloud is real, it's just busy doing real things like training machine learning algorithms and hosting web applications and databases. It's also hosting Xbox Live, so there's that. No actual in-game performance benefit, though.

This is a joke thread correct?

The cloud died when the DRM and always online direction for the One died. One thing that MS did do well is free cloud saves for non gold members. Something Sony should consider having.

All their exclusives vanished into the clouds

Drivatars in Forza are also brought to you via the Cloud and they are pretty damn cool.

If and when we all finally go always online (which is the only way I play anyways) we can start seeing the cloud in action.

This is not just a Microsoft thing BTW. Sony's game streaming would greatly improve and be available on more devices. Same goes for MS, and don't think Nintendo is not paying attention. The Cloud is very real, and I believe it will one day take over consoles and the way we play and pay for gaming.

The fact that I plugged in my X1X and the cloud had all my settings saved into my account including my elite controller configuration was spectacular.

It made it so much easier to jump in and game without having to transfer files

This for sure. I have yet to see anything substantial gaming wise, but its worth is definitely there especially for low to mid-tier compute data science projects and hosting mid size web apps and db's (which are both me in this case). The cost is just insanely good for those people and start-ups. Honestly its great for fairly big companies too especially if they need the extra compute for busy seasons such Black Friday and the like but they normally have a fairly established IT setup to begin with otherwise and would rather not shift things over for several reasons.

Off-topic haha, but yeah I haven't seen too many benefits for games aside from maybe using cloud services for scaling up for unexpected traffic when a game goes bigger than expected (similar to the whole Black Friday thing). I would think most of the big gaming companies manage their own data centers for that though.

It was all empty hype and bullshit, TLHBO.

Never having to fuss with game saves is nice. Achievements too, no manual syncing like PS trophies. Digital library management is some of the best on consoles, none of that purchase history cronology bullshit, makes managing digital library with hundreds of titles simple and easy. Friend activity feed is nice, allows me to see gameplay from friends of games I hadn't considered. And I'm able to sign on at friend's place and download and play anything I own, saves carry over too. Nice features, sure you can laugh and minimalist impact, but you'd be stupid to disregard them entirely. It'd be nice if Sony and Nintendo borrowed these ideas too.

They need to supercharged those clouds.

Almost as big of a flop as the console itself.

Titanfall 1 was a nice showcase, the grunts were all powered by the cloud and helped with making the maps/battles more lively. Titanfall 2 seemed like a drop off, not sure if they used the cloud tech again for grunts. Forza series makes good use with the Drivatars. Then we have upcoming, Crackdown 3 with the multiplayer mode using cloud to handle destruction.

Who knows though what else other devs are doing with cloud thats not advertised. Think its interesting tech and glad MS is using it and looking at ways to enhance games.

I'm not sure that Titanfall is a very good example of the "deeply intelligent NPC AI" they were talking about at the start of the gen. Forza AI, itself, has some pretty serious issues as well.

The changed direction when they no longer required an always on console. They reacted to what people wanted but the whole idea of cloud powered had to be sacrificed.

Kudos for listening and reacting to what people wanted.

I was excited to see what they could do with all the consoles linked to the cloud. There where hints, maybe next time.