CNBC-"Sony doesn't Have a Cloud Presence" "MS has Big Head start"

X1X dev kit with full 44 CU (6.6 TFLOPS) and 24 GB GDDR5 memory runs XBO/XBO S/X1X retail performance profile inside a VM (virtual machine, customize Hyper Z with AMD hardware specifics). Microsoft has virtual machine technology that virtualize Xbox One consoles.

Virtual X1X on Vega 64 would consume half of Vega 64's GPU resource.

Microsoft's virtualization is superb, there's no question on that. But their Azure infrastructure isn't build around racks of Vega 64s. You can't emulate high level GPU resources on Intel Xeon blades or even Epyc servers. They have specialized Tesla and K series from Nvida for that and have yet to partner with AMD on cloud GPU. So you are now in a situation where they either buy up a ton of AMD cloud GPU servers to maximum compatibility and emulation for current Xbox games or your cloud versions of future Xbox games are all PC based and you no longer have low level hardware parity between your cloud and Xbox versions of the game. The other alternative would be to go Intel/Nvidia for the Xbox. The point is using an x86/AMD dev kit to emulate …. x86/AMD is barely emulation. Its the same underlying architecture. The challenge is for MS to release a "powerful" Xbox and then have parity for its cloud alternative while addressing any disparities in underlying architecture which so far everyone has been conveniently ignoring.

@juarbles: Yup. They do this "We are Borg, resistance is futile. You WILL love XBox." thing. Then, they will tell you you're a mouth breather, pond scum, fanboy, and a troll for not "seeing the light" of XBox.

Its pretty bizarre. I'm glad I made like Leah Remini and left the cult ong ago.

We don't don't know Microsoft's R&D status in relation to back porting X1X's Hyper Z AMD specifics into Windows Server's Hyper Z.

AMD has partnered VMware for virtualized GPU that can install normal GCN drivers e.g. https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/workstation-virtual-graphics

AMD's current GPU cloud partner is Amazon Web Services (AWS), read https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/workstation-virtualization-solutions-csp

Infrastructure is one problem while software is another problem i.e. Microsoft doesn't need Sony's hardware BC method with PS4 Pro's "butterfly" design with two GCN with 20CU.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-inside-playstation-4-pro-how-sony-made-a-4k-games-machine

"First, we doubled the GPU size by essentially placing it next to a mirrored version of itself, sort of like the wings of a butterfly. That gives us an extremely clean way to support the existing 700 titles," Cerny explains, detailing how the Pro switches into its 'base' compatibility mode. "We just turn off half the GPU and run it at something quite close to the original GPU."

X1X's 40 CU or 44 CU is not a mirror to XBO's 12 CU layout.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/microsoft-project-xcloud-game-streaming-service

Microsoft announces Project xCloud, its own AMD GPU-powered game streaming service

Microsoft is rolling out custom AMD server X1X APUs.

X1X dev kit has the full 44 CU (6.6 TFLOPS) with 24 GB GDDR5 with Xbox One specific Hyper Z software. It's closest to reborn Hawaii 44 CU GCN with Polaris and subset Vega IP updates on a server. Hawaii's NAVI relative would be NAVI 12 with 40 CU,

Microsoft's DirectML is important as the alternative to NVIDIA's DLSS for future Azure cloud services.

@michaelmikado: I think we're arguing slightly different points here, both at a technical level, and the broader picture overall.

MS has been heavily installing XBX VM over the last year or so into their racks, so yes... MS does have AMD GPU VM's installed, and is installing more and more everyday.

My point about it not mattering on which brand it was running on is referring to streaming games to devices in general such as pc's, tablets, phones, etc... Could Nvidia GPU VM's not work on those devices? It would seem as though you're asserting that because Azure is run primarily with Nvidia GPU's, that Azure can't stream games, which is ludicrous. Reading your last post, I'm beginning to think that you're referring explicitly about streaming to an xbox console. You would have somewhat of a point there, but again... They've already began installing AMD GPU hardware into their racks for streaming there. So while your point had merit a year ago, it really won't soon.

Adding onto all of this, is the fact that MS owns all it's infrastructure in which to put this. Sony does not. If you can't see the obvious advantages that this entails, then I really don't know what to tell you.

You're arguing both sides of te same coin here guy. On one hand you try and explain how MS is at a disadvantage because it uses Nvidia for it's VM's and won't work, but at the same time claim that Sony can partner with just anyone, and everyone, and it will be fine. Sony has very little cloud infrastructure when compared to MS. That's just a simple fact. You're actually trying to imply that that fact gives Sony some kind of advantage?

@babyjoker1221: not having that kind of financial overhead can certainly be seen as an advatnage.

Why do you keep quoting the specs of an X1X dev kit?? That means absolutely nothing in cloud computing beyond the fact that they are able to emulate them in software which is a given with any dev kit.

I also don't understand the comparison to the PS4 Pro design?

From the very video you posted the xCloud blades appear to be 4 XB1s in blade configuration. That's the heart of the issue! As I already stated MS only had a few options, one of them being to buy up AMD hardware and stick them in their datacenters. It looks like that's exactly what they are doing except they are doing what Sony ALREADY did and abandoned 5 years ago to the day. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-sony-creates-custom-ps3-for-playstation-now

"Sony has developed brand new PS3 hardware to power its PlayStation Now streaming service, revealed earlier this month at CES in Las Vegas. Sources who have been briefed on the project suggest that the new PlayStation 3 consists of eight custom console units built into a single rack server. It's the new PlayStation hardware that everyone will have access to, but few will actually see."

The problem with this configuration, which Sony soon realized, is that you are essentially running a remote console which has little benefit. You aren't effectively taking advantage of the cloud properly and why Sony dropped support for many devices when it moved to its modern method of PSNOW. Rather than emulating the entire console, local OS features remain local and the cloud servers actually emulate the "game" part of the games rather than creating a VM instance of an entire console. This frees up resources and allows dynamically allocated cloud CPU/GPU resources. Effectively what it means is that rather than taking the entirely of a CPU, the games can use only the processing cycles it needs to run the game rather than emulate the entire console. Thus in theory less demanding games would require less shared resources and allow more of those games to run on a given node.

This is all part of AMD's and AWS's MxGPU (Multi-user GPU) strategy. Currently Amazon has AMD FirePro™ S7150x2 GPUs (7.2 TFlops) and recently began upgrading to V340s!!!! For reference V340s are dual Vega 10, 56cus for a grand total of 112cus and 32GB HMB2!!!!!!!! We are talking 21+TFlop GPUs with over a 1TB of bandwidth. That's how you build a cloud gaming infrastructure. The advantage to something like this is that while they could theoretically run 12 PS4 on a single card easily (or 20 XB1s). They could also just as easily drop a PS4 Pro or even emulate proposed PS5 hardware in that environment.

Sony, right now. Today, no caveats or ifs. Could drop a PS5 beta game running on an PS5 dev kit emulator on an AWS server and have PSnow players beta-ing PS5 games because their hardware infrastructure moved away from dropping hardware into servers to being hardware agnostic as long as there are enough low-level similarities for the game to be playable on with minimum emulation.

Basically to recap so we are clear. No we don't know exactly where MS is in developing their VM software, however they taking the EXACT same steps Sony did 5 years ago in 2014 or putting custom blades which emulate the console 1-1. Essentially remote consoles. The PSNow model has since moved to a more MxGPU based environment which is why we are seeing so many PS3 Psnow games getting upgraded to the PS4 version. It is simply more cost effective to run this way. To be clear, I am not saying MS cannot catch up, but they are far far far behind in their implementation. They are still at the point with PSnow was 5 years ago where they were relying on custom built "consoles in the cloud" rather than true cloud MxGPU or Grid GPU processing.

No, I'm saying MS is making Xbox games. They have two options. They make an Xbox in the cloud or they run a PC version in the cloud which would be compatible with NVidia Grid. They decided to literally stick Xboxes in a blade and stick them in a data center. The problem with that, as I pointed out above is that a configuration like that isn't inherently scalable like an MxGPU solution would be. That would be the idea situation where instead of emulating the entire console, OS and all in the cloud like PSnow did in the early days, you instead emulate just the game part and allocate available resources based on the demand of the game rather than emulating the entire console and essentially using remote desktop to access it. Basically the old solution for Sony and PSnow would be like Netflix creating VMs for users to connect to, open a web browser and watch movies. MS seems to have adopted this model like Sony did 5 years ago which sticking console parts in blade servers.

The reason AMD gpus are important are due to compatibility for games. Of course you can run game streaming in Nvidia Grid, what do you think the other providers are using. The difference is they are running PC games which are built around being compatible with Nvidia games. PS and XB games are designed to run on AMD APIs on a low-level. To get it to run on Nvidia grid you would first have to emulate AMD GPUs which, if its even possible wouldn't be worth the effort or cost. Such to the point that MS would rather build custom servers than attempting to run these games on their existing cloud infrastructure. That was always the point I made from the very beginning and even without knowing about the hardware I made the right point just judging from that business decision from MS.

As far as owning infrastructure, I already pointed out the difference in the above post but I will try to lay it out better:

AWS which Sony partners with, has partnered with AMD for cloud MxGPU blades. These are specific hardware configurations designed to allow you to dynamically allocate cloud GPU resources.

What this means is that your cloud game VM and resources are completely scalable. Because these MxGPUs are AMD based, which both the XB1 and PS4 are. They have high low-level api compatibility. Attempting to run these on Nvidia Grid would require a significant amount of processing overhead to the point where it would 1) not work at all. or 2) require so much overhead that you would be better off replacing or buying new AMD hardware which is EXACTLY what MS did. The other option would have been to run PC versions of the game which MS still might do at a latter time.

The reason Sony has an advantage is because their games are not tied to specific custom servers. Any datacenter that has V340 nodes would be able to run PSNow games. Sony isn't tied to just one specific service provider. Amazon just happens to be the biggest with MxGPU partnership with AMD so it works out mutually. In this scenario, Sony through it's service actually subsidizes the cost of these servers. In theory this would also allow Amazon the opportunity to piggyback off any of these cloud servers for its own games instances. Such as when users want to play an instance of bejeweled, or Crossy Roads, or any other low requirement game. But, again as I said, because Sony would be able to spin up PSnow servers or any datacenter running V340s, they wouldn't have to wait for custom servers to be built and they aren't totally dependent on a single service provider. It's just basic cloud disaster recovery advantages. Your obscuring the specifics of the scenarios.

I'll just recap my points:

You can't just run these games on whatever servers you have lying around in your datacenters.

You need AMD based server GPUs for low-level api compatibility for both XB1 and PS4 games

Your only choices are to partner with someone who has a ton of cloud AMD MxGPUs or buy them.

MS doesn't have them so they need to either buy them or partner with someone. They choose to buy/build custom ones.

Sony is building their service around off the shelf v340 MxGPUs, it means any datacenter and provider who has them can run their service and they don't need custom parts or specific providers.

Sony may pay a premium to use it, but it also means their operation is completely scalable based on usage. Further they can scale the resources dedicated to individual users for more demanding games and technically offer game experiences beyond what they could offer even PS5 home console users. They aren't on the hook, out of pocket for building up custom server racks that no one uses and can scale with other providers based on demand.

This man gets it!!!

Microsoft does not own all its infrastructure for Azure. Why would you think that?

Red herring with Sony's solution and you're wrong with

1. "They have specialized Tesla and K series from Nvida for that and have yet to partner with AMD on cloud GPU." with Microsoft's youtube video xCloud reveal dated October 5th, 2018.

2. PS3 dev kit is not like X1X dev kit with multiple XBO/XBO S/X1X retail/future looking X1X at 6.6 TFLOPS with 24 GB GDDR5 foot print performance profiles.

PS3 dev kit doesn't have extra memory storage to support PS4's development, hence it's not like X1X dev kit.

I'm already aware of PSNow's status with PS3 based rack servers and PS4 hardware migration. PS4 Pro's BC mirror hardware approach and Sony's PS4 BC doubts on PS5 reveals Sony's VM technology state.

PS4 Pro's boost mode has BC issues with PS4 games and that's only slightly higher clock speed mode PS4 Pro with 18 CU enabled NOT the 36 CU for PS4 games.

X1X's GPU is not a mirror design from XBO's GPU and it can handle XBO games in boost mode all the way to 40/44 CU with near PC Direct3D like scalability behavior. Microsoft Direct3D API was designed to scale from tablets to PC gaming monsters which includes boost and power saving throttle modes, and resource management is part of the API design.

NAVI 12 with 40 CU is interesting since PS4 Pro's GPU has 40 CU (PS4's GPU has 20 CU).

@ronvalencia said:Red herring with Sony's solution i.e. you're wrong with

1. "They have specialized Tesla and K series from Nvida for that and have yet to partner with AMD on cloud GPU." with Microsoft's youtube video xCloud reveal dated October 5th, 2018.

2. PS3 dev kit is not like X1X dev kit with multiple XBO/XBO S/X1X retail/future looking X1X at 6.6 TFLOPS with 24 GB GDDR5 foot print performance profiles.

PS3 dev kit doesn't have extra memory storage to support PS4's development.

1) No I'm not wrong, MS has yet to announce/engage in any partnership with AMD for multi-user cloud GPUs. Their only existing partnership for Azure Cloud GPUs are with Nvidia. Unless you are trying to say that them stuffing 4 XB1s in server blade is their "partnership" They have no formal cloud GPU services to offer from AMD. Again stuffing Xboxs in servers are not multiuser cloud GPU resources, they're just remote xboxes.

2) Again DEV KITS have absolutely ZERO, NADA, ZIP. To do with cloud servers. I'm not sure why you keep bringing up dev kits unless you don't understand what they actually are. The PS3 blade servers Sony put in were used because they had no choice for PS3 cloud games. The remainder of their games, PS1, PS2, PS4, run on general server nodes with cloud MxGPUs.

If you want to bold specs we can do that. AWS is use V340. These card have 112cus for 21+TFLOPS again 21+TFLOPS with 32GB of HBM2 REPEAT 32GB of HBM2 . I don't even understand why you are bolding those specs when PSnow is running on hardware right now that completely outclasses it. I don't even understand what you are trying to prove here. Oh, and that card, takes up only 1, count them 1 PCI-E slot on a server node. Because AMD partnered with AWS they also have 32 core EYPC server paired up with 21+TFLOP cards. And... to make it more intense. That's just in a SINGLE socket configuration. It's more likely for wattage space gains they have 2 socket 64 core/128 thread servers paired with 2 of those 21Tflop cards. That's not even acknowledging the fact that we are expecting Epyc rome with a possible dual configuration of 128 cores/256 threads and pushing past 4GHZ on all cores plus 2TB or DDR4 RAM, Gen 4 PCIe and that's not even taking into account a server NAVI variant on the MxGPU cloud side.

3) PS3 dev kit??? Why do you keep bringing up dev kits???? What do dev kits have to do with cloud services. What are you even talking about??? Why would a PS3 dev kit have or even need "extra memory storage to support PS4's development.

Anyway, to put it simply. Sony 5 years ago did exactly what MS is doing right now. Basically Desktop as a Service or in this case Console as a Service by emulating the entirety of the console by stuffing custom console hardware into servers. It's a tactic that works in the short term to launch a platform but there's no getting around the fact that MS is 5 years behind where Sony is. For Sony, they have moved past that stage of deploying consoles in boxes and made their service scalable. Meaning if they want to allocate 4 cores and 20cus to a user to play a game they can do so. If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too. The virtualization on the V340s is hardware based and transparent to the processes running its whatever resources Sony wants to assign at any given moment. It was designed that way. That's the key difference. That's why this is so crazy. Having MxGPU allow companies the ability to provide experiences and hardware performance that might not be seen until a theoretical PS6.

The irony of all this is that this cloud was all MSs dream, but they abandoned it and are taking a longer road to get there. MS can easily do what Sony is doing, but theres no getting around that fact that they are 5 years behind them in this venture.

@michaelmikado: You're right. I fold. MS is way way way behind Sony here. Like you stated, MS has a few options on their upgrade path, but by the looks of things they're not even where Sony was 4 years ago. It'll take MS way too long to upgrade at this point. It's probably only a half-hearted effort on their part anyway. I suppose we should just be happy with MS's play anywhere program as it currently is, which admittedly sucks seeing as MS games won't work on pc's with Nvidia GPUs.

I also concede to Shewjenga as well. The overhead costs must be enormous for MS. If they had the capital that Sony, Amazon, or hell even RadioShack had, then it would be easy. Too bad they're so cash strapped these days eh?

I've seen the light. Sony is really the only company capable of streaming games on a large scale. Sure PSNOW has regressed since it was introduced. Yeah its available now on less devices than before, and not available in many regions. I think this Sony's way of "crouching before they leap" so to speak. They've got Amazon in their back pocket. Amazon has said that they're getting into streaming games, but I honestly think they were joking. I mean way even try when they can let Sony just make all the money.

Thanks for educating me. I almost thought for a moment that MS had a robust cloud server system at they're disposal. Good to learn that it's all just for show, and basically useless for streaming games.

MS doesn't own it's infrastructure? Do they borrow it? Do they lease or rent it. Do tell.

@babyjoker1221: Besides hardware, the Azure network is about 90% leased. This includes the data centers, colocations (basic space and power) and transport. Microsoft does own a few of their own data centers but the majority are owned by major players in the data center space.

I used to work there but now I help manage the Azure NA/LATAM backbone from a Pro Services viewpoint working on the long hual fiber and Colo points.

Interesting!

Could you clarify "Besides hardware"? They lease 90% of everything excluding the hardware, or including it?

Also, Who are the major players in data center space that own the data centers?

Honestly curious.

Edit: What are your thoughts on Azure being completely useless for streaming Xbox games?

@babyjoker1221: Lease 90% of everything excluding the hardware. You have to think of the capital it would take to build your own network of that magnitude. Even with the money that Microsoft has....they couldn't take on that feat and why would they when others that specialize in that already own and operate global optical networks. Google barely managed to do it from a metro fiber perspective and after starting that project it fizzled out rather fast. Same goes for the data centers. Of course they have built a few of their own DC's in various locations across the states but nothing out of country.

By big players in the space you can easily look at providers like Equinix, Cyrus One, the super NAPs in the southwestern states for example. They offer a turn key solution and can provide the space, power and cooling and build suites or cages to your needed specs in their managed facilities. Pretty straight forward.

I don't see why it would be useless for streaming Xbox games they have a pretty expansive and robust network that can certainly handle it. How they go about doing it is another matter that @michaelmikadoseems more versed in than I. I'm "just the network guy". :)

1. You stated "They have specialized Tesla and K series from Nvida for that and have yet to partner with AMD on cloud GPU" and you moved the goal post with "multi-user" which is irrelevant.

During CES 2019, Microsoft's Phil Spencer confirmed their partnership with AMD on the next Xbox and xCloud.

xCloud has been announced back in October 5th, 2018.

2. The real nothing is your argument. Microsoft's forward and backwards compatibility software ecosystem are more advanced when compared Sony's version.

Furthermore, Microsoft's network infrastructure are within top three cloud infrastructure in the world. The specific node hardware like Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPU can be replaced by AMD equivalent hardware e.g. AMD Epyc based servers joining Microsoft's network infrastructure. The important part with cloud infrastructure is the network infrastructure not specific hardware nodes which can be easily replaced e.g. upgrade or changed.

For 3rd party cloud customers, DirectML has important role as an alternative to NVIDIA's DLSS. AMD confirms DirectML support for Radeon VII.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181001005218/en/ZT-Systems-Showcases-XPO200-3U-PCIe-Expansion

Based on Microsoft’s Project Olympus, this solution leverages powerful AMD accelerators and processors in a flexible Open Compute platform.

“AMD has a long-standing commitment to the Open Compute Project and is excited to see Microsoft’s Project Olympus platform, to which AMD was a significant early contributor, gain the support of ZT Systems’ XPO200 3U PCIe Expansion System,” said Scott Aylor, corporate vice president, datacenter products, AMD. “The combination of AMD Radeon Instinct™ GPU and the AMD EPYC™ CPU products in this ZT Systems solution delivers outstanding virtualization density and an exceptional combination for executing AI and deep learning workloads”

“This new ZT Systems expansion system brings a powerful combination of AMD GPU and CPU technology to bear on demanding cloud workloads,” said Kushagra Vaid, General Manager and Distinguished Engineer, Azure Hardware Infrastructure, Microsoft Corp. “The speed and efficiency with which ZT developed this solution demonstrates why Microsoft’s Project Olympus specification is the leading open source hardware standard for next-generation datacenters. ZT Systems continues to demonstrate their ability to rapidly develop and deliver flexible solutions to the market.”

ZT Systems XPO200 Server Solutions combine the groundbreaking energy efficiency, performance, versatility and cost effectiveness of Microsoft’s Project Olympus platform with ZT’s hyperscale-focused integration, supply chain and deployment capabilities. Customers benefit from ZT’s unique experience deploying platforms featuring these technologies into real-world hyperscale environments.

The XPO200 3U PCIe Expansion System with AMD technology and based on Microsoft’s Project Olympus can be seen at the Open Compute EU Summit in Microsoft’s booth B1.

Dated: October 1st, 2018. Source PR from https://www.ztsystems.com/#!/new-3u-pcie-expansion-system-powered-by-amd-based-on-project-olympus/

VII catches up to Volta/Turing Tensor's INT4 machine learning datatype support.

Both VII and Volta/Turing Tensor supports INT4, INT8, INT16 and FP16 inference workloads. The old Vega IP doesn't support INT4 and other AI related instruction set features.

Console GPUs has semi-custom feature like two GPC (graphics command processor) units which doesn't exist for AMD PC GPUs which has a single GPC (graphics command processor).

XBO GPU has semi-custom feature like FP10 support which needs to be bridged into PC GPUs. 3rd party Xbox 360 emulators for PC DirectX12 bridge this missing feature.

There's a reason for custom cGPU rack server since PC Vega GPUs doesn't have all of game console's semi-custom changes.

X1X Hawaii 44CU based GPU supports XBO GPU's semi-custom features with full baseline Polaris IP and subset Vega IP selections.

You are still wrong.

@michaelmikado said:

3) PS3 dev kit??? Why do you keep bringing up dev kits???? What do dev kits have to do with cloud services. What are you even talking about??? Why would a PS3 dev kit have or even need "extra memory storage to support PS4's development.

Anyway, to put it simply. Sony 5 years ago did exactly what MS is doing right now. Basically Desktop as a Service or in this case Console as a Service by emulating the entirety of the console by stuffing custom console hardware into servers. It's a tactic that works in the short term to launch a platform but there's no getting around the fact that MS is 5 years behind where Sony is. For Sony, they have moved past that stage of deploying consoles in boxes and made their service scalable. Meaning if they want to allocate 4 cores and 20cus to a user to play a game they can do so. If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too. The virtualization on the V340s is hardware based and transparent to the processes running its whatever resources Sony wants to assign at any given moment. It was designed that way. That's the key difference. That's why this is so crazy. Having MxGPU allow companies the ability to provide experiences and hardware performance that might not be seen until a theoretical PS6.

The irony of all this is that this cloud was all MSs dream, but they abandoned it and are taking a longer road to get there. MS can easily do what Sony is doing, but theres no getting around that fact that they are 5 years behind them in this venture.

Where's your source for "Sony, they have moved past that stage of deploying consoles in boxes and made their service scalable. Meaning if they want to allocate 4 cores and 20cus to a user to play a game they can do so. If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too. The virtualization on the V340s is hardware based and transparent to the processes running its whatever resources Sony wants to assign at any given moment. It was designed that way. That's the key difference. That's why this is so crazy. Having MxGPU allow companies the ability to provide experiences and hardware performance that might not be seen until a theoretical PS6."?

Prove "If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too".

Why the "mirror" PS4 BC hardware design for PS4 Pro? Why Sony needs two 20 CU in a mirror design?

Proper VM PS4 software on superior hardware will NOT need PS4 Pro's mirror hardware BC method!

@michaelmikado said:

The virtualization on the V340s is hardware based and transparent to the processes running its whatever resources Sony wants to assign at any given moment. It was designed that way

That's FALSE since V340's resource partitioning feature needs VM software support e.g. VMWare vSphere's virtual AMD GPU hardware feature support.

Virtual CPU/GPU/IO solution is not complete without proper hypervisor software support.

Windows Server 2019 features GPU-P (P for partitioning).

AMD's MxGPU driver is software. V340's VM hardware features are useless without software driver and updated hypervisor software.

AMD's MxGPU PC driver wouldn't know about game console's semi-custom features and needs to be bridged.

MS has already made billions off Azure and will continue to do so and not just for games. This is a big difference than Sony. MS has a lot of ways for this to make Dollars and sense(See what I did there?). That's why they are investing billions around the globe(5 billion in Qatar just this month) not like the few hundred million Sony has spent here and there.

@the-a-baum: @ronvalencia:

You guys aren't getting it. MS's Azure network CANNOT STREAM XBOX GAMES PERIOD!!! Sony has the infrastructure in place now to currently stream any games they want because they use AWS, which uses AMD hardware. MS is at least 4 years behind Sony. On top of this, they're adding blades which is now defunct tech that Sony has already abandoned.

At this point MS is just too far behind to even attempt to stream games at any sort of large scale. They're engineers have no idea what they're doing, and XCloud can't release in 2019 or 2020. MS has to be lying at this point.

michaelmikado spelled all this out clearly. MS has nothing but Azure, which is useless for streaming xbox games.

Rent cost goes to "profit and lost" balance sheet while capital cost goes to balance sheet (Asset/Liabilities), hence it's preferable to use rent method to lower "profit", hence lower tax payment.

Microsoft Skype can stream videos.

Microsoft Stream in Office 365 can stream videos.

Microsoft xCloud can stream Xbox One gameplay videos.

Microsoft's Windows Virtual Desktop can stream PC desktop.

Microsoft's Azure Media Services can stream videos

@mobius_basic: So MS owns the hardware correct? I've contracted in a few DC's before. Most of the time, I have no idea who runs or owns them, but occasionally I talk to a person or two there and ask just out of interest. I've been in a few that were owned by MS, or at least that's what I was told by the people I spoke to. Of course they could've just assumed or something.

Still, if MS owns the hardware, I struggle to believe that it is a severe disadvantage to do so vs Sony's option. michaelmikado certainly seems to know his stuff, but what he's claiming runs exactly counter to what MS has stated. I suppose time will tell if he's a savant or just a fanboy who wants to believe Sony has all the answers, and is versed just well enough to convince himself that he's right.

MS has been talking about cloud for years and yet they are barely implementing it if not just as good as Sony's. Sony on the other hand already have services like PSNow that uses cloud.

What makes you guys think Sony is not capable of cloud? For all we know they might expand on PSNow and announce it when PS5 releases. Sony knows what they are doing and they will compete.

Heck even Nvidia have a cloud service.

First. Nobody has claimed that Sony is not capable of cloud. (Whatever the hell that means.)

Second. PSNOW is available on less devices now than it was two years ago. It also hasn't expanded into regions that Sony had originally planned it to. In a sense, PSNOW has actually regressed a bit, rather than progress.

Third. Fun fact. MS used cloud compute In gaming before Sony. At least to my knowledge.

Fourth. Yes Sony know what they're doing, and they will compete. No one has suggested that Sony is getting g out of the "cloud" business as you call it.

Nvidia has a cloud service with no exclusive games. I recycled cow's argument.

From https://customers.microsoft.com/it-it/story/nbcolympics

NBC Olympics breaks streaming records with support from Microsoft Azure

NBC's stream services are powered by Microsoft Azure.

Well either way guys and gals we are going to see very soon what this is all about. MS will be rolling out beta this year. And i know for fact Phil has been using it for the last year on his travels.

This is a new territory for us all and I don't think from what I have heard it will be like anything currently available. Just going to wait and see.

But I stick by my argument that MS has already found ways to monetize this besides gaming and Sony has invested Peanuts.

Alright, let me chime in. What does MS having Nvidia Compute and not AMD have to do with their ability to provide game streaming? PC games run on both Nvidia and AMD out of the box so it is not a problem at all when what MS is doing is providing streaming services. They have no obligation to use their Xbox One hardware at all, they can use the PC version of the same game. Even if they need to use Xbox API/System software for whatever reason, they own the Xbox and its OS. They can create a translator that emulates Xbox calls to AMD cards to their Tesla Cloud. They have already made the entire Windows compatible with ARM.

Them having Nvidia is actually their strength as Nvidia in general has better performance for AI/ML/Games than AMD for quite a while with Nvidia also having better Driver/Software support. Lastly, Sony themselves utilize Nvidia's hardware for their streaming tech to compress encode/decode videos in addition to them having to use Nvidia in their PS3 boards.

Lastly, any cloud streaming service will most probably be utilizing PC games rather than games that are hard-coded to the console hardware which is a limitation for scalability.

@babyjoker1221: im replying towards what the OP posted claiming that Sony is far behind in cloud technology.

When I said MS's cloud I meant how they advertise "cloud" as if it will be the saviour of gaming. How is that working for them with Crackdown 3?

Conclusion is, Sony will be atleast on par with MS with cloud technology. Streaming games/music etc.

My sarcasm previously aside.

No he didn't. MS has the infrastructure to build upon. Azure using Nvidia powered VM's really has zero effect on their streaming capabilities. He's claiming that MS games that currently work just fine on Nvidia hardware can't be streamed using Azure.... Because it's using Nvidia hardware.

No need for a fancy answer with buzzwords, technical jargon, and spreadsheet abbreviated words changes the fact that what he's claiming his patently false.

Now there are some things in his posts that are true, but his overall assumption is that Sony has the upper hand with their infrastructure and hardware, when they own almost none of it. MS meanwhile which owns some of its infrastructure, and all of its hardware is at a serious disadvantage.

@ronvalencia said:

1. You stated "They have specialized Tesla and K series from Nvida for that and have yet to partner with AMD on cloud GPU" and you moved the goal post with "multi-user" which is irrelevant.2. The real nothing is your argument. Microsoft's forward and backwards compatibility software ecosystem are more advanced when compared Sony's version.

Furthermore, Microsoft's network infrastructure are within top three cloud infrastructure in the world. The specific node hardware like Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPU can be replaced by AMD equivalent hardware e.g. AMD Epyc based servers joining Microsoft's network infrastructure. The important part with cloud infrastructure is the network infrastructure not specific hardware nodes which can be easily replaced e.g. upgrade or changed.

For 3rd party cloud customers, DirectML has important role as an alternative to NVIDIA's DLSS. AMD confirms DirectML support for Radeon VII.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181001005218/en/ZT-Systems-Showcases-XPO200-3U-PCIe-Expansion

Based on Microsoft’s Project Olympus, this solution leverages powerful AMD accelerators and processors in a flexible Open Compute platform.

“AMD has a long-standing commitment to the Open Compute Project and is excited to see Microsoft’s Project Olympus platform, to which AMD was a significant early contributor, gain the support of ZT Systems’ XPO200 3U PCIe Expansion System,” said Scott Aylor, corporate vice president, datacenter products, AMD. “The combination of AMD Radeon Instinct™ GPU and the AMD EPYC™ CPU products in this ZT Systems solution delivers outstanding virtualization density and an exceptional combination for executing AI and deep learning workloads”

“This new ZT Systems expansion system brings a powerful combination of AMD GPU and CPU technology to bear on demanding cloud workloads,” said Kushagra Vaid, General Manager and Distinguished Engineer, Azure Hardware Infrastructure, Microsoft Corp. “The speed and efficiency with which ZT developed this solution demonstrates why Microsoft’s Project Olympus specification is the leading open source hardware standard for next-generation datacenters. ZT Systems continues to demonstrate their ability to rapidly develop and deliver flexible solutions to the market.”

ZT Systems XPO200 Server Solutions combine the groundbreaking energy efficiency, performance, versatility and cost effectiveness of Microsoft’s Project Olympus platform with ZT’s hyperscale-focused integration, supply chain and deployment capabilities. Customers benefit from ZT’s unique experience deploying platforms featuring these technologies into real-world hyperscale environments.

The XPO200 3U PCIe Expansion System with AMD technology and based on Microsoft’s Project Olympus can be seen at the Open Compute EU Summit in Microsoft’s booth B1.

Dated: October 1st, 2018. Source PR from https://www.ztsystems.com/#!/new-3u-pcie-expansion-system-powered-by-amd-based-on-project-olympus/

VII catches up to Volta/Turing Tensor's INT4 machine learning datatype support.

Both VII and Volta/Turing Tensor supports INT4, INT8, INT16 and FP16 inference workloads. The old Vega IP doesn't support INT4 and other AI related instruction set features.

Console GPUs has semi-custom feature like two GPC (graphics command processor) units which doesn't exist for AMD PC GPUs which has a single GPC (graphics command processor).

XBO GPU has semi-custom feature like FP10 support which needs to be bridged into PC GPUs. 3rd party Xbox 360 emulators for PC DirectX12 bridge this missing feature.

There's a reason for custom cGPU rack server since PC Vega GPUs doesn't have all of game console's semi-custom changes.

X1X Hawaii 44CU based GPU supports XBO GPU's semi-custom features with full baseline Polaris IP and subset Vega IP selections.

You are still wrong.

@michaelmikado said:

3) PS3 dev kit??? Why do you keep bringing up dev kits???? What do dev kits have to do with cloud services. What are you even talking about??? Why would a PS3 dev kit have or even need "extra memory storage to support PS4's development.

Anyway, to put it simply. Sony 5 years ago did exactly what MS is doing right now. Basically Desktop as a Service or in this case Console as a Service by emulating the entirety of the console by stuffing custom console hardware into servers. It's a tactic that works in the short term to launch a platform but there's no getting around the fact that MS is 5 years behind where Sony is. For Sony, they have moved past that stage of deploying consoles in boxes and made their service scalable. Meaning if they want to allocate 4 cores and 20cus to a user to play a game they can do so. If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too. The virtualization on the V340s is hardware based and transparent to the processes running its whatever resources Sony wants to assign at any given moment. It was designed that way. That's the key difference. That's why this is so crazy. Having MxGPU allow companies the ability to provide experiences and hardware performance that might not be seen until a theoretical PS6.

The irony of all this is that this cloud was all MSs dream, but they abandoned it and are taking a longer road to get there. MS can easily do what Sony is doing, but theres no getting around that fact that they are 5 years behind them in this venture.

Where's your source for "Sony, they have moved past that stage of deploying consoles in boxes and made their service scalable. Meaning if they want to allocate 4 cores and 20cus to a user to play a game they can do so. If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too. The virtualization on the V340s is hardware based and transparent to the processes running its whatever resources Sony wants to assign at any given moment. It was designed that way. That's the key difference. That's why this is so crazy. Having MxGPU allow companies the ability to provide experiences and hardware performance that might not be seen until a theoretical PS6."?

Prove "If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too".

Why the "mirror" PS4 BC hardware design for PS4 Pro? Why Sony needs two 20 CU in a mirror design?

Proper VM PS4 software on superior hardware will NOT need PS4 Pro's mirror hardware BC method!

@michaelmikado said:

The virtualization on the V340s is hardware based and transparent to the processes running its whatever resources Sony wants to assign at any given moment. It was designed that way

That's FALSE since V340's resource partitioning feature needs VM software support e.g. VMWare vSphere's virtual AMD GPU hardware feature support.

Virtual CPU/GPU/IO solution is not complete without proper hypervisor software support.

Windows Server 2019 features GPU-P (P for partitioning).

AMD's MxGPU driver is software. V340's VM hardware features are useless without software driver and updated hypervisor software.

AMD's MxGPU PC driver wouldn't know about game console's semi-custom features and needs to be bridged.

You're far far far off base again. The reason multi-user support is important is because THAT'S THE POINT OF THE CLOUD

otherwise you simple end up with remote desktop scenarios where you have full on consoles dedicated to a single user.

You keep bringing up Nvidia stuff when I've already explained WHY at the low-level it simply won't work. The reason "custom" hardware isn't needed is because they typically aren't doing anything that it's higher level cards aren't already doing. Being semi-custom doesn't mean its exotic and hasn't already been incorporated into new cards and drivers. Vega emulates all functions of AMD cards that XB and PS4 use. That's why they make PC dev kits in the first place.

Again, and I've stated this before MS has yet to partner with AMD for cloud MxGPU. Your partnership only amounts at this opoint to stuffing consoles on racks. That's again defeats the entire purpose of going cloud in the first place!

Of course there is a software aspect to V340 but that is 100% invisible to the VMs and has no effect on performance of the VMs because there is hardware separate from the GPU resources specifically for handling the virtualization. At no point did I say there's no software involved merely that they have hardware for virtualization which doesn't impact the performance. That should have been understood by any one that understands virtualization!

Prove "If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too".

Why the "mirror" PS4 BC hardware design for PS4 Pro? Why Sony needs two 20 CU in a mirror design?

What is this even????? What does PS4 backward compatibility on PS4 pro have to do with cloud servers? Why would I even need to prove that a server with 32 cores is able to use 32 core???????? Like you aren't even making sense. You're making obtuse arguments that have nothing to do with a cloud service.

Further your claim seems to be that MS has better Xbox virtualization because their X1X dev kit can emulate XB1 and XBS?????? But Sony, who CURRENTLY has working home consoles emulating PS1, PS2, and has working cloud PS4 servers cannot emulate their own consoles because PS4 pro uses a different method to run PS4 games????? WAHT?

Look, I'm not sure we are even speaking the same language, but your comments are all over the place and throwing specs and info that have ZERO to do with the conversation as if they have some relevance and meaning. You posted a slide of CPU-P which has zero relevance to the conversation, especially because its highly, highly, highly unlikely either MS or Sony would be running ANY of their virtual consoles on pure WS2019. You're just posting random tech information from Google in hopes that its somehow relevant.

Does anyone even care about remote consoles?

Yup, you're right. Just wishful thinking.

@juarbles: @michaelmikado: We call him ronbot for a very good reason.

The PSNow model has completely changed from a DaaS (Desktop as a Service or in this case Console as a Service) model to a SaaS or AaaS (Application as a Service Model). To think of it in equivalent terms one of the first usages of Azure was IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) Where by MS spun up virtual servers hosted in the cloud and companies could put things like Exchange up there. MS eventually made Office 365 where the virtual servers are invisible to the users and only the configuration is visible to system admins. This made the resources completely dynamic and able to move resources at will based on load without having to maintain a system with the same Virtually configuration even if the extra resources are not being used.

So how this works with PSnow and why it changed:

Sony's initial foray into the cloud space was more similar to IaaS where they would emulate the entire console, rather than just the game in the cloud. This means even they would emulate all functions of the console, similar to how you see the console backend when you use RemotePlay. This was incredibly inefficient. What Sony found is that they could stream "just the game" rather than emulating the entire console and it would be several times more efficient. The result is that most online Operating System level experiences with PSnow occur on the client side. Example, when you hit the "share" button. Rather than launching a remote share button on an emulated PSnow console in a cloud, that function is done locally on your PS4. It also why when you launch on PC you are prompted to login first and pick you game prior to seeing anything that resembles a PS4 environment. The OS functions have been stripped from the game and processed locally.

Now to accomodate this Sony had to discontinue support for devices which wouldn't be able to support client side functions. Example: When I used to use my Vita for PSNow it would emulate the entire PS3 OS on their server blades. The short window PS4 games were available, they wouldn't even run on the vita. Now, you can start a PSNow game right from the PS4 menu just like it was any other game and again, its because the OS functions stay local.

No one is taking MS's experience with cloud away. My initial argument was that in order for MS to compete they would need AMD GPU hardware in their cloud. Without even realizing it, I was 100% right because that's exactly what they did. The problem is the way they did it. They are using the exact same method Sony tried and determined was not viable long term. The xcloud blades are a stopgap to a long term strategy just like how Office 365 moved to a SaaS model from an IaaS model.

It just shows that MS are still in their infancy with this, not that they can't do it but Azure doesn't immediately translate into gaming consoles. It's like saying Dell makes computer parts so they automatically are well equipped to make game consoles...No there are specialized requirements for games that are not found in general computers. That doesn't mean Dell would fail but they aren't uniquely equipped beyond a games company like Atari/Sega to release a console just because they make general purpose PCs.

So you are actually 100% on the right track here and many of the initial thoughts you have were mine as well. My initial thought was that MS had several options.

1) xCloud actually being built on Intel/Nvidia cloud solutions and releasing PC versions of the games in the cloud rather than Xbox versions. This seemed like the most like scenario as they would be able to leverage their existing infrastructure. In this scenario they would release every game to both Xbox and PC and possible explore the next xbox or xbox versions as being Intel/Nvidia based.

2) They buy up or partner with datacenters who use AMD cloud GPUs and emulate XB1s in software. Attempting to emulate XB1 AMD GPUs on Nvidia software at high performance levels may not even be possible and if it was it would be so inefficient and require so many resources they would be better off buying AMD cloud GPUs or using the PC versions instead.

The problem is they didn't do any of these things. Instead MS is building custom xCloud servers which are 4 XB1s stuffed into a blade server. Essentially making them remote desktop consoles designed for 1-1 use. From the sounds of it, each server would only be able to support 4 active users at a time.

The debate I'm making is that this business decision, puts them in the exact same place Sony was in Jan. 2014, 5 years ago. Sony built custom Cell blades which were the equivalent of 8 PS3s and stuffed them into datacenter racks so they had 8 concurrent users per rack. I'm not saying MS cannot be successfully or that they can't catch up. Rather they are making the same mistakes Sony did 5 years ago but I understand why you would do this if your intention is to just get remote consoles going.

If we fast forward to today. Sony has since moved to a more SaaS structure. Rather than emulating the entire OS environment like they did with PS3 blade and MS is currently working on now. They emulate and use just the resources needed for the game itself while keeping the OS level function on the client machine running PSnow. As such this currently limits it to PS4 and PC. This allows them to scale resources to the games needs rather than constantly having to emulate the entirety of a console instance. That's what the debate is, the avenue MS has taken is the same one Sony took 5 years ago. Just for reference Sony has been retroactively upgrading its PS3 library to PS4 versions which is likely because its far far far cheaper and more efficient to run the PS4 version than the PS3 versions which require the custom Cell blades in datacenters.

With the AMD V340s rolling out in datacenters, Sony would have the ability to use any data center any where in the world (Edited so no misunderstandings: Meaning Any datacenter running V340s and EYPC servers) and just spin up their PSNow instances as demand dictates and allocate as much of the GPU resources as they want. The biggest factor I explained was that in theory Sony could release a beta of PS5 games to PSNow gamers today if they wanted because the can allocate as much of the server GPU resources to a single instance as they want. Sony has switched to a SaaS which makes their cloud solution more flexible at this point.

Video stream don't require low latency response,games streaming does.

Just because you have a cloud doesn't mean you can stream games,sony know this which is why years ago they bought both gaikai and onlive which were basically the 2 biggest online streamers of games on PC.

And the reason why MS is probably working on a mix streaming tech that mix local controls with a video stream,remember the tech (patents for online streaming) from gaikai and onlive are owned by sony,which mean if MS want to stream games it most not cross those patents or else they have to pay sony,which is why MS is probably working on its own thing.

Again still MS is behind sony on the streaming market even that they own a huge cloud service.

1-Yes many have here state so.

2-Yes because sony know on which devices the service get mostly play,remember when there is an update for the software on your hardware end there will be multiple versions which would need updating,android and PS4 would certainly use different updates maybe the % of people was to low on those device to even bother with it.

But the service is alive and kicking and making the most money compare to EA or MS.

3-Cloud compute is not the same,as what is been offloaded to the cloud is not latency sensitive,AI is something that you can offload to the cloud because it doesn't need constant refresh,like many GPU process would or in this case game streaming which latency most be low and response fast so that your character can register your movements as soon as you execute them.

This ^^ is one of the reasons i use to argue with lemmings about what could and what could not be done by the cloud as MS really didn't came clean with the cloud stuff and it was obvious why they wanted people to believe that the XBO could match and pass the PS4 graphics wise using the cloud.

4-You really should read more many lemmings have basically write off sony because they don't own a cloud,some even claim MS is ahead when they are not even streaming games and sony is for years.

1) It's a no-brainier as they already started releasing all their First-Party titles on PC, so they have both the PC and Xbox version. They will simple use the PC version in all the cases be it their game or a game from third-party. They can keep working with whatever hardware vendor they want for their consoles.

2) They have no need for that due to point 1 still they don't need to emulate the entire X1, I may be wrong but as per my understanding the Xbox's uses a subset of Windows and it abstracts the actual hardware from the devs kind of like how DirectX is an abstraction layer for GPU's. Of course the abstraction may vary but as per my knowledge that was precisely the reason why MS virtualized the Xbox OS. As we have seen from PC games thheir is a driver overhead but it isn't that much.

The problem is they didn't do any of these things. Instead MS is building custom xCloud servers which are 4 XB1s stuffed into a blade server. Essentially making them remote desktop consoles designed for 1-1 use. From the sounds of it, each server would only be able to support 4 active users at a time.

The debate I'm making is that this business decision, puts them in the exact same place Sony was in Jan. 2014, 5 years ago. Sony built custom Cell blades which were the equivalent of 8 PS3s and stuffed them into datacenter racks so they had 8 concurrent users per rack. I'm not saying MS cannot be successfully or that they can't catch up. Rather they are making the same mistakes Sony did 5 years ago but I understand why you would do this if your intention is to just get remote consoles going.

They are idiots if they are doing it and I highly doubt they will do that though much more crazy decisions have been taken in the software industry so who knows. I hope they are probably just saying for the marketing reasons or whatever but are actually using the approach I listed in point 1. And as far as I'm aware Sony is still using the same blade servers for their PS3 streaming don't know about PS4's though my bet would be them utilizing the enterprise AMD GPU servers running PS4 OS for that as it's a non-brainer. As per my understanding Sony is in a much more trouble compared to MS because they don't make PC versions of their first party titles and such are tied to AMD more than MS.

If we fast forward to today. Sony has since moved to a more SaaS structure. Rather than emulating the entire OS environment like they did with PS3 blade and MS is currently working on now. They emulate and use just the resources needed for the game itself while keeping the OS level function on the client machine running PSnow. As such this currently limits it to PS4 and PC. This allows them to scale resources to the games needs rather than constantly having to emulate the entirety of a console instance. That's what the debate is, the avenue MS has taken is the same one Sony took 5 years ago. Just for reference Sony has been retroactively upgrading its PS3 library to PS4 versions which is likely because its far far far cheaper and more efficient to run the PS4 version than the PS3 versions which require the custom Cell blades in datacenters.

With the AMD V340s rolling out in datacenters, Sony would have the ability to use any data center any where in the world (Edited so no misunderstandings: Meaning Any datacenter running V340s and EYPC servers) and just spin up their PSNow instances as demand dictates and allocate as much of the GPU resources as they want. The biggest factor I explained was that in theory Sony could release a beta of PS5 games to PSNow gamers today if they wanted because the can allocate as much of the server GPU resources to a single instance as they want. Sony has switched to a SaaS which makes their cloud solution more flexible at this point.

I don't know what you mean by keeping the OS level function on client as it's practically impossible. The client is just the receiver and transmitter, nothing more. How could the PS OS resides on the client, the PS OS is on the server.

1) The problem is you are making the assumption that "They will simple use the PC version in all the cases" While I 1000% agree this is a no-brainer and makes sense. That is directly at odds with what Microsoft has shown and built. That's the core problem. Microsoft has a massive Azure Network with cloud GPU infrastructure and industry leading virtualization tools and yet their solution is to rack up Xbox1 consoles into server racks. I'm taking Microsoft's word at face value, I can't just say oh MS didn't really mean that when they showed off working hardware to tech new outlets and build custom servers expressly for that purpose. No matter how much I think they should do it a different way, that plain not what they said.

2) This is both correct and incorrect and I'll explain why for both PS4 and Xbox1. Both consoles used instances sub sessions for their games within the OS layer itself. Meaning PS4 and XB1 have their OS system running processes in the background which take resources. We've been through this discussion before but we have seen some background processes, unrelated to gaming, take the equivalent of 2 cores/1.5GB of RAM. I would say on average it should be assumed that 1core/1GB RAM is reserved for OS specific and the actual "game" instance can reserve the remainder of the available resources. Effectively this means to run an actually game in a virtualized environment you would only need specification equivalent to the specifications reserved for that game instance on the original platform. What Xcloud seems to be doing is that rather than replicating just the game instances in cloud. It's replicating the top level OS as well which is technically further overhead on the servers which it doesn't really need to do if local clients can handle them and only the game instances are virtualized in cloud and streamed. The approach of virtualizing the entire OS rather than the game instance was the same approach Sony took on launch. It's why it played on everything from phones to TVs, because the entire console OS and not just the game instances were virtualized in cloud. Sony has moved away from that model, pushed higher end client devices and reduced support for devices which could not support them. Example: when you suspend a game you can go out, browse the store, check friend lists, open other programs, download games, etc, etc etc. None of those functions need to be enabled for a cloud instance of the game. Thus emulating the entirety of the OS doesn't make sense when you only need the cloud to run the game instances. However, in Microsoft's defense. Emulating the entire system creates parity between cloud devices. So the experience is the same whether on a cellphone, tablet, or Xbox. It also probably makes any licensing issues easier to get around. Its the same approach Sony took.

Again, I am agreeing that the best approach is to run on cloud hardware, but that's not what MS said they did. I'm not going to call them liars and pretend they are actually doing something different because they said what they are building. Again the irony of this is that PSnow is currently fair closer to the rumored Xbox Scarlett cloud only system. If I were a betting man, my guess is that Sony's direct competitor to the Xbox Scarlett would be a PS4, possibly even a smaller or handheld version. PSnow in terms of infrastructure, is already what MS was talking about. Instanced games from the cloud. Local processes on the client end.

Also yes, PS3 games still use the custom PS3 blades, but its also why Sony has been upgrading the PS3 versions to PS4 at every possible chance. The consumers assume Sony is gifting upgraded versions, but its really to reduce load on their PS3 custom servers. As for Sony being in more trouble, MS would only have an advantage if they were running PC games for xCloud instead of Xbox games. Instead they went the opposite way. Not only are they going to be running Xboxs, but they are building custom servers from xbox parts to accommodate their business model. Microsoft, by all accounts should be ahead in this space but they aren't and Sony is cruising in a space with no competition at this point.

1. Can you link to an article or video where they stated they are using Xboxes in the cloud? Not saying you're lying just want to see how they are selling their cloud?

2. Again, why would client device parity be dependent on what I'm doing in the server? I don't need any kind of console OS on my client to access the game running on the server.

Also what do you mean when you say Sony is upgrading PS3 versions to PS4? Do you mean the remaster or you're suggesting that Sony is porting all PS3 games to PS4? In both cases it will still not solve the problem of 3rd party PS3 games on PS Now.

Irony is comedy, this thread is hilarious. Rewind to 2013 and all of these cows said cloud was nothing and would never be a reality and even so far as to criticize MS for investing in the cloud.

Fast forward to today and all of a sudden Sony is the leader in cloud computing and has the best cloud infrastructure because they bought not one but two failing game streaming services that didn’t even own the servers they where using, Gaikai and on live where using Amazon and Rackspace servers. There are no dedicated Sony data centers they have to rent servers from companies that will soon be their competition in cloud services. Sony using Amazon servers going forward would be the same as them using MS servers to power PSN, paying your competition to power a service that you guys are actively competing with each other for the top spot. The former owner of onlive said in the source that MS is the only company that has everything needed to make this happen yet fanboys want to disagree and deny this. The price Sony paid for both of those services together is nowhere near 1/4 of the amount the big 3 have invested in their cloud infrastructures over the past decade. Until Sony actually has their own cloud infrastructure they can’t compete with MS, Google, or Amazon. Do you guys really think Amazon would abandon their pursuit of game streaming to fully support Sony while Google and MS keep moving forward? Sony needs global, scalable data centers and currently MS has the most of those and keeps investing billions into Azure.

But I could be wrong but I have to wonder if Sony is so far ahead and already have everything in place where is their equivalent to xcloud? MS is talking about doing this this year with current gen games not Xbox 360 or OG Xbox games. When will Sony announce PSnow game streaming to all devices besides just PS and Pc? Do they even have the resources to do it?

1) Here's their full blog complete with an xCloud blade animation. https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/10/08/project-xcloud-gaming-with-you-at-the-center/

About Project xCloud

Scaling and building out Project xCloud is a multi-year journey for us. We’ll begin public trials in 2019 so we can learn and scale with different volumes and locations. Our focus is on delivering an amazing added experience to existing Xbox players and on empowering developers to scale to hundreds of millions of new players across devices. Our goal with Project xCloud is to deliver a quality experience for all gamers on all devices that’s consistent with the speed and high-fidelity gamers experience and expect on their PCs and consoles.

We’ve enabled compatibility with existing and future Xbox games by building out custom hardware for our datacenters that leverages our years of console and platform experience. We’ve architected a new customizable blade that can host the component parts of multiple Xbox One consoles, as well as the associated infrastructure supporting it. We will scale those custom blades in datacenters across Azure regions over time.

2) No the purpose of the client is to offload processes that are not required for the game instance. For example. All the processes that track when your friends are online or send you a message, are outside of the game instance itself. There's no reason to emulate that part of the console if the client can do that and offload some that work to the clients while running the game instance itself. Like I said, the main reason I see MS emulating XBX in the cloud is to ensure experience parity whether you are playing on a PC, Xbox, or Mobile device you would have the same access to auxillary functions of xbox live such as friends lists, chats, etc. That all happen outside of the game instance itself. You could argue that they could strip away things like friends lists from the total experience but that wouldn't really be helpful to the consumer.

Sony is updating PS3 games that have a PS4 remaster or PS4 version to that version rather than running the PS3 version on its service. Basically if a game released on both, they are moving to offer the PS4 version instead of the PS3 version. They are doing this for 3rd party games too so it's not just their 1st party games.

1) Well the statement is generic enough like 'We’ve architected a new customizable blade that can host the component parts of multiple Xbox One consoles, as well as the associated infrastructure supporting it'. It could mean the OS layer, the API layer, the virtualization layer etc. Nowhere did they say they are literally putting Xboxes in datacenters. Customization is a vague and broad term, just like said to market it to casual people to somehow convey that it's running on actual Xbox and they will have the same quality. I mean it's nowhere to the level of what Sony said for PS3's. The only really close thing is their animation of the server but that can also be chalked up for marketing/PR.

2) Oh, so that's what you meant by OS functions. Yeah, they don't have to emulate it and why should they the client can process all those just fine on its own because those services themselves are running on servers separate to streaming. Why should they put another hop for that! If I were to rephrase that I would call hat auxiliary services apart from gaming.

3) The games that got a remaster, there are many PS3 games that didn't but yeah I agree over time they will retire those games from library until they can emulate those PS3 games on x86 cloud servers with satisfactory performance.

@michaelmikado: I see the points you're trying to make, and frankly it makes sense to a degree, but let me put out an example and you explain it.

Let's use Gears 4 as an example as it's a rather recent MS game.

Gears 4 works on both AMD and Nvidia hardware. If MS wanted to stream this game, MS could use Azure to stream it to any pc or mobile device using the pc version of the game no?

The xbox blades that MS is currently installing would be used if YOU WANT TO STREAM TO AN XBOX CONSOLE. The emphasis here is to mean that if you want to stream to an xbox console, then the blades make sense. The console would need the very specific AMD run version to be streamed due to the console not being flexible due to it being very specific and optimized hardware.

So if you wanted to stream Gears 4, how would Azure being backboned by Nvidia GPU's not be possible when Gears 4 runs just fine on any pc that uses Nvidia hardware? You've said that they would need to run the xbox version, but almost all MS titles these days are Play Anywhere games that can easily run on either AMD, or Nvidia hardware.

There's something I must be missing here, because while your arguments are informative, I can't them around the fact I stated above. So to wrap this up. Yes, I completely agree with you if only an AMD version of MS titles existed like Sony's games do. I also could agree if we were only talking about streaming xbox versions of games to xbox consoles. Where I can't get on board with you is if I wanted to stream a MS game to any device such as pc, mobile, etc...

^This guy gets it!!!

We can debate the finer tech points. Some of us can learn a few things, and the points brought up are interesting.

The overall bigger picture presented here by some is absurd though. We can discuss the hurdles MS has when it comes to streaming, and criticize some of their methods used. That's fine, but to argue that Sony has all this infrastructure in place, and is a leader in cloud computing is beyond me. It's like trying to debate which car manufacturer is better Ford or Enterprise. Then explaining how Enterprise is better because of all their infrastructure and such is better. It's honestly LOL worthy.