Microsoft Looking To Take Xbox Live To The 'Next Level' & Reinvent Entertainment Powered By Cloud

It seems that Microsoft are working really hard behind the scenes to improve the Xbox One as well as the services related to it such as Xbox Live.

[TFJWM]

Bleh just more guessing from job postings

[AngelicIceDiamond]

Pretty much, still sounds great nonetheless.

[Naga]

Well, yes, but that's the point of a job listing - it's meant to sound inspiring and incredible, because that's the motivated type of person they are seeking to hire.

The problem with this being a news article is that it says absolutely nothing new about Microsoft's intentions. Of course they're working hard behind the scenes. Of course they are still pursuing cloud computing entertainment. Of course they are still aspiring to be a leader in the industry.

If this was something about seeking a team of engineers to develop a new handheld console, or someone to convert standard console games into HoloLens experiences... or hiring a skilled pilot for a new magical spaceship... then it would be newsworthy.

[Kingdomcome247]

You heard the magical spaceship rumor too?! ;)

[nveenio]

I'm surprised more people haven't complained about not seeing results from Microsoft's cloud. I was upset we waited so long for Suspend/Resume on PS4, but Microsoft's cloud was touted as a major advance for the games directly, including graphics and multiplayer. They seem to be moving very slowly in terms of implementation.

[XBLSkull]

Sounds great, with Xbox Live being so far ahead of its competitors already it's great news that they are in the process of taking it even further.

[diehardmetallicafans]

April Fools's??...

[cell989]

Sony has been reinventing online play with Share Play and remote play. Hard to believe Microsoft has been falling behind in network features. They use to rule cause they had party chat, now they want to bring up the cloud talk again.

Theyve had more than a year to show us what the whole point of the cloud power is, and I have yet to see anything impressive.

[Mikefizzled]

Come E3 Crackdown has the weight of the world on its shoulders proving that this cloud powered entertainment is a viable idea.

[Zeref]

Yeeah man Crackdown is going to be definitive proof that Cloud Computing works. Even though we had a real demonstration before there are still people who don't believe it.

[BlackTar187]

no one has ever said Cloud doesn't work.

People have said that the bandwith required to make it viable for an entire console pop. isn't there yet around the world. What you saw working was a closed demo shown working in it's most optimum peak with 0 lag.

Also we're going to be at year 2 of the console and we still ahven't seen it used like it was promised or even 5% of what was promised. 4x the power.

[DougLord]

BlackTar you have no idea if it was in its most optimized setting with 0 lag. No one does. And in the parts of the world with bad broadband, they don't sell many xones. I've got 100Mbps and an option to go to Gigabit if I want. And I'm not in a top tier city.

People need to get used to the fact that the most likely these was go to 4k is streaming.

[OOMagnum]

@black Frankly, I dont think you know what your talking about,for this reason and this reason alone. It requires small bits of data to run the computation, to and from the console. So you saying, "it was a closed demo running at optimum peak" doesnt make sense because that only applies to data hogs which this is not. Your argument would be valid if it was something akin to PS now.

[Highlife]

Cloud computing games are not the greatest idea. How long will they support the game. What happens when they are done supporting the game. What will work? You see games shutting their servers down and then a games multiplayer is useless.

[LordMaim]

@DougLord: You realize that the United States has some of the worst internet infrastructure of any of Xbox One's target markets? Why do you think that so many people railed at the "always on" plan Microsoft presented at its launch?

[BlackTar187]

So you think it was run on a server that wasn't in the building or very close? You think it was a busy server or a server most likely used for them exclusively on the demo? NOT TO MENTION the fact that it was running a a HIGH END PC

Those are all things that you need to take into account. You also need to realize MS HQ probably has TOP OF THE LINE internet. < just assuming but most likely true if it's anything like EA HQ's.

You think i don't know that it's not pushing it's entire data thru at one time? You think that shrinking it into small bits (Which is obvious anyways) is the cure all for internet connectivity speed issues? I mean come on. If you're goign to tell me i don't know what i'm talking about bring up more then elementary level data points. Jeez

[Death]

"NOT TO MENTION the fact that it was running a a HIGH END PC"

Says the guy that's never seen an early developers kit. http://www.gamezone.com/new...

G5's were used in the past also. A PC can be used to emulate the hardware early on with the current consoles which are x86 based. Last gen used modified PowerPC architecture which is why the G5's were used.

Later we see debug units which look more like the final hardware. These are used for beta testing and can run unsigned code. PC's can still be used in their place, but they aren't the Dells you can buy at the big box store. To think we see early demo's on retail consoles is absurd.

[LamerTamer]

So now we LIKE an always online requirement? When the X1 was announced the always online requirement blew up the internet.

Now it is a feature. Well not everyone has a fast connection or one at all, then what?

[Gamer1982]

The cloud will be more of an accessory to gaming rather than a helper to it. Meaning it will be used for stuff like ghost data and and syncing you to your friends and bringing you a more social gaming experience, and less improving graphics I'm afraid purely because they cannot offset graphics to the cloud because of viability. I'll give you an example, Imagine needing the net for the cloud to play a map in crackdown and your nets down?? You wouldn't be able to play the map as the game would be too slow to play and for this reason alone Microsoft and every other company around the world wouldn't do it.

If the world was connected 24/7 cloud gaming would work but until that happens it's just not viable for anything more than social gaming and making the experience more enjoyable. Thats not to slate MS here they can do great things with it just don't expect them to increase games to 4K or anything with it.

[AngelicIceDiamond]

Hopefully Those rumors of Halo 5 cloud usage are making it in.

100's of AI on screen (with out a hit on 60 frames) with dynamic weather, lighting and physics all in the cloud.

The cloud exist in Forza so far and dedicated servers in X1 games.

But man its really about time MS shows us what they said the cloud would ultimately do.

@Mike Crackdown at E3 showing off the cloud compute will be off to a great start towards that goal.

[kraenk12]

I doubt they would compromise their top system seller with something like this. It would be extremely unfair if the majority of gamers would be left out because of bad internet connections.

[Godmars290]

Crackdown isn't going to show its stuff as E3 but in livingrooms when it actually comes out. For all of the talk, if cloud support isn't up and running, making noticeable differences, its going to be a sh*tstorm.

[AngelicIceDiamond]

I agree.

The reason why I think this cloud stuff is real is because well, the time line of how everything played out thus far.

X1 dedicated dev kit.

Xbox One Dev Kit.
http://www.polygon.com/2015...

That was announced 2 years ago at the reveal. Rumors were going around that it got canned but that wasn't the case at all. And now, its here and happening this year.

DX12 for PC as well as Xbox. http://www.gamespot.com/art...

This rumored started 2 years ago as well. Back and forth a tug of war for a year in a half between devs and fanboys who said it won't do anything and other fanboys that said it will excel X1's power 80 years in the future practically.

DX12 will make some very significant use on X1 with its new API and better GPU performance/tools. And much ease of use.

WIN10 cross X1

http://news.xbox.com/2015/0...

This started before the console reveal it was rumored for a while but a rumor that we all saw coming. Especially when it reveal that XBL was running a smaller portion of windows. Crossbuy, Dedicated servers on both platforms and crossplay.

See the pattern? everything that was announced 2 years ago MS has delivered on now nobody wants to wait and expect these things to happen over night. I even had some days where I didn't even bother commenting for a while because of all the extremists and naysayser it was damn near pointless reasoning with people here.

So naturally cloud is next on that list of promises. And I expect to see it at this years E3 or sometime this year.

[TheCommentator]

@angelic

Also, Microsoft and its development partners are prevented from full disclosure of certain elements due to an NDA. AMD couldn't even fully disclose DX12 at GDC.

[rainslacker]

I think MS thinks that it can work. I also think they they have overstated it's effects on games. Throw in fan boys hyping it up to no end, and all of a sudden it becomes a thing that they can not possibly deliver, at least not at people's seemingly current expectations

Asynchronous computing is indeed possible. In things like Crackdown it'll be used for physics for environment destruction, and the hardest part of physics is the initial calculation, after that it's minimal date to determine it's new location. In TF it's used for AI, but lets face it, it's an online only game running on a dedicated server, so it isn't something new or even that extraordinary. Drivatars...well that doesn't require the cloud, but the work is done in the cloud.

They will have to really show something substantial for gamers to be impressed, and I hate to say that we really aren't up to that point yet technologically to allow it to make it happen. Graphics will probably not be affected this gen, as NVidia has already said, and my biggest concern is the amount of resources needed to run this stuff for millions of gamers and if it's even worth the trouble. Someone has to pay for it, and it's going to be the publishers, and I doubt most of them prefer a ongoing cost, so that means servers get cut sooner. The only reason some will go for it is that they really want to push the always connected router.

[Perjoss]

Oh good, I was wondering when we'd hear more about the cloud...

[Kingdomcome247]

Oh good, I'd been wondering when we'd see another pointless comment that adds absolutely nothing to the conversation...

[Perjoss]

"adds absolutely"

Ironic

[DxTrixterz]

Ah yes THE POWAH OF THE CLOUD.

[DanzoSAMA]

Ya XBOX is the Future.

Game on

[ABBAJESUS]

NINTENDO POWER!

[TheCommentator]

Correction:

Nintendo (under)Power(ed)!

[Utalkin2me]

/\

That's kind of ironic, considering your a Xbox one fanboy.

[Lennoxb63]

This post had me thinking about Nvidia Grid and how its games run completely from a cloud. Looking at the way people shun MS for talking about the cloud, it would be a massive amount of hypocrisy if they accept Nvidia Grid with open arms.

[rainslacker]

Grid is a different concept. You can run any application on the cloud, but MS cloud talk in relation to X1 is for asynchronous computing. While asynchronous computing it possible, it is limited in it's application, and games tend to be much more finicky about the data it needs to work than your average productivity software.

Just to note, Azure could likely run full games on the servers, and stream them just like PSNow or Grid. Whether MS wants to do that or not, or if they are working on it, is really unknown. I think if Grid or PSNow become popular, MS will do so, and they are in a good position to implement it quickly.

[Lennoxb63]

I know the difference between both Azure and Grid. I'm talking about cloud dependent services in general. Whether its cloud computing or cloud streaming. It would be hypocritical if they accepted it.

[rainslacker]

Hypocritical how? Streaming games has already been proven to work. Asynchronous computing for games can work in theory, but in practice it has yet to prove itself to the extent that it's been hyped up to.

This is what people dismiss, the fact that it won't make the X1 3X more powerful, the fact it won't improve graphics and lighting, and the fact that it divides the player base into the haves and the have nots.

Streaming is an all or nothing kind of thing, but people that stream take that as a choice to use the service, whereas with Asynchronous computing techniques you are buying a game which is gimped unless you are connected with a reasonable internet connection. It'd be like buying a Blu-Ray movie, but to get the full resolution you had to connect to the internet and have it decode half the image. People would be pissed as they brought the movie like everyone else, and just want what should be made available to everyone.

I know that if asynchronous computing actually manage to work, and becomes viable, that many publishers are going to force implementation, and will severely limit offline features for the sake of controlling the consumer. They have already proven themselves to try and do everything to make that happen, and this is just another back door that people will gladly accept.

[Lennoxb63]

So cloud streaming; which takes significantly more bandwidth than cloud computing, is going to work everywhere with everything. I think not. All cloud computing is doing is crunching numbers. Small bits of data at a time which is less than the amount used to process HD video. But you're saying streaming an entire game is better? Your logic is horrible.

[MasterCornholio]

@Len

"But you're saying streaming an entire game is better?"

Let me just say this. At least its been proven to work.

Grid, Onlive, PSnow, Shareplay and Gaikai are proof of that.

As for using the cloud to compute games with the graphical detail of Avatar the movie. That hasnt happened yet.

Anyways you do know that games take up GBs of data right? While streaming audio\video takes up much less than that.

[rainslacker]

I won't get into the technicalities of how games run in loops and require data when it's needed. I'll just say that many of the things people expect from this whole cloud compute are years away from being able to implement practically...and I'd say they won't show up with such ambition in this console gen.

Lag isn't much of a problem when it comes to input for streaming games unless it gets really high. However, lag is a huge problem for a game loop which executes much faster than the speed of the controller input.

Asynchronous computing, which is what Azure's cloud compute is, is possible, and even done currently with some productivity software, but the places where it works well are the places where data doesn't have to be available virtually instantaneously. This is why MS cloud plan is limited in application, and to see the best results they would be better off just running the whole game in the cloud and streaming it to the user.

You are right, there is less data being transmitted for MS version of the cloud on X1 compared to streaming. However, the stuff that is being computed are things that need to be computed on demand, and the X1 can execute many cycles of the game loop long before it can send data to the cloud, wait for it to process and then have the data sent back. Time sensitive data is not suitable for this process, so the cloud will be regulated to mostly mundane thing like what's being done now.

[Letthewookiewin]

Oh no...... Not the cloud again.

[Mikeyy]

Xbox one part IV = A new API
Xbox one part V = the cloud strikes back

I'm seeing a pattern here...

[AngelicIceDiamond]

Lol you see it now right?

[Mikeyy]

Who could forget that novel written a while back?

Xbox one chronicles - the search for the hidden GPU by MR.X isdn-99969

[iTechHeads]

Good luck with that.

[urwifeminder]

Sweet ms love your work.

[kraenk12]

Even though it's all talk and no actual results.

[Dizzydrifter1]

My box keeps gettin better and better Day One owner .

[mokkeyrg2]

greatness truly awaits...

[TheNew1]

Anyone have any spare XBL codes?

[Artemidorus]

All that cloud power and it ends up on entertainment.

When they going to learn we want consoles with games used to it's best abilities?

[zugdar]

I don't like the cloud idea. All it takes is a poor connection/discontinued service and all your spent money is gone.

Its already happening with day 1 patches. Most disks are already useless as they all require a patch to work properly. This is why I appreciate the WiiU moreso recently.

[L0wlifeGamer]

I read "Cloud" and didn't clicked at "Read full story"