Bluepoint on the Cloud: Hard to Explain In a “Power of the Cloud” Soundbite but it Helps Quite a Bit

Many have been wondering just how much Microsoft’s Azure cloud helps with current games, and even more so on Xbox 360, that wasn’t designed to make use of it to begin with. Bluepoint Games President Andy O’Neill explained how it helped with Titanfall’s port.

[Axios2]

Good read

Another slap to the face of the cloud nay-sayers

Funniest part is that Sony started investing in cloud computing back in 2012:

http://www.bloomberg.com/ne...

To sy nothing of Nvidia's cloud computing:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013...

[MrSwankSinatra]

All he said was the cloud was being used as server. which is what many companies have been doing. he didn't some fairytale remark like "the cloud will boost the power of the xbox one making it 10 times more powerful"

[johndoe11211]

Did i read a different article than you? Basically what he's talking about is dedicated servers, something that all sony first party games use, not cloud compute magic fairy dust that will make 1 xbox into 10.

[mwjw696]

Yea except Killzone that uses P2P.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/0...

"the servers will only act as a hub between different game clients and any game logic will not be hosted on the servers. “Almost all logic relating to you (e.g. moving, shooting and taking damage) runs on your local PS4,” stated Boltjes, “with only a very small portion of the game logic (i.e. mission/scoring logic) running on the ‘session master’, one PS4 in the game selected for its connection quality.”

Any there are no other multiplayer Sony First party games out on the PS4.

[blahblah123]

What he's saying is:

Dedicated server infrastructure is less computationally taxing on a client with limited resources than using a Peer2Peer system.

New? Nope. Cloud is one of those "nebulous" marketing terms now used for anything server side. I remember when blog used to be called a weblog in 1992. Then it became a thing.

[randomass171]

For console game though, using this cloud would definitely help the online gaming scene (provided it actually works). So it's something to at least keep an eye on, if you ask me.

[Flutterby]

@randomass

It's not even a new thing on consoles it's just dedicated servers even ps3 games had them last gen.

[whitefang1988]

Thing is ps4 fan boys are not saying the cloud is shit. They are saying Microsoft is using it in there pr way too much without showing much in the products they release. If ps4 was to use cloud computing which it will, they won't get annoyed because Sony usually walks before they talk and actually have something substantial to give players like psnow.

[r1sh12]

@Axios - Cloud will work at some point, but its too early for it to work for the mass market.
The limiting factor is a users internet speed which will fluctuate at different times.

If you were a business that uses Azure - like I do for work, we have a fixed leased line so we get 1gbps up/down all the time and azure processes large batch operations in SQL, CRM etc..

Ive said it before, Ive deployed a 'cloud' model at customer sites who have 1gbps network and it works fine, but when the limiting factor is bandwidth then there's an issue when its not consistently good.
They could compress the data, but uncompressing is a CPU utilising software so it negates its value.
It is the future, but that future is not right now.

[Matt666]

Or fanboys could actually grow up and just respect the other consoles for what they are considering every console has it's advantages and disadvantages.

Furthermore fanboys make me laugh, a few years ago they would of been complaining about the PS3 running behind on resolution compared to the same game that was also on Xbox 360, or complaining about the PS3 controller, now they suddenly jumped ship. That's called being hypocritical.

[whitefang1988]

Got to bring you up on that last comment, hypocritical? Gamers are not been paid to stay on one brand. Sony and Microsoft are companies and we are who give them money, if you believe the 360 was the best console of its era and then move to ps4 I think personally that's just using your head, and not been drawn in by lies and marketing bs. I'm not having a go at you personally I just believe anyone who feels loyalty to them even when facts stare them in the face just seems strange IMO. I mean you don't buy every game from a developer just because its made from them do you? You see if its your type of game and if you think you'll enjoy it before doing so.

[Flutterby]

The xbone has no advantages when it comes to gaming which is why we all bought consoles, the ps4 has ALL the gaming advantages.

[CryofSilence]

You forget that cloud computing isn't exclusive to the Xbox One platform. It's been used for a long time on PC, and it will be implemented into PS4 (first instance is PSNow, an emulation service entirely over the cloud).

[fenome]

Let's let E3 decide this shall we? It's coming up soon, everyone can talk till their heads fall off and it doesn't matter. Let's see some games. This E3 is gonna be the battle of Normandy, and my body is ready!

[Azzanation]

Except Sony's Cloud is for Streaming and it limited to a few countries. Azure Cloud is world Wide and can also do processing. People really need to stop comparing the two. There both different Cloud services. There are many different types of Clouds. Look it up.

[fenome]

Yeah, but what it comes down to is that 'clouds' are servers, it's how you utilize those servers that makes the difference.

Azure also isn't exclusive to X1 either, Microsoft uses it as a whole and also rents them out to other people.

I'm not taking sides on this either way, I just like playing games. Hopefully they'll actually show something at E3, I'm sick of hearing about the 'cloud', just show us what you're actually doing with it.

I'm loving this gen and stoked on what's gonna happen with it! Show me the money! Can't wait for E3. Can't wait for The Witcher 3, Destiny, The Order: 1886 and whatever else everybody's got up their sleeves!

[imt558]

I love cloud fairy tales.

[elm]

Yes xbots the cloud is real, if it keeps you happy in your purchase decision for the next 5 years in the hope some magic will happen then keep believing.

By the way please copy & paste this so in 5 years time when you finally see that the bone is massively inferior and that no such magic improvements came true you have a reference that told you so. :)

Going to be a long gen listening to the bullshit MS are feeding you. I've got to hand it to MS they are masters at brain washing desperate people.

[Venoxn4g]

yeah, their PR is in the clouds for sure :))) that's why I am sticking with Sony & Nintendo & PC ..sorry, but they wont get me like they did with X360

[pakua]

Massively inferior? The only person who sounds brainwashed is you. Why do you use your valuable time telling Xbox fans that their console sucks? Shouldn't you be playing all those damn great exclusives you have? Oh, wait...

[BigErn]

On that note, shouldnt you be playing the console-saving Game From God Titanfall? Oh, wait....

[nope111]

King Crimson all over again. “It just works“

[incendy35]

Anyone who thinks extra processing power is bad, is uneducated. Really no other way to put it.

[candy_mafia]

It's not about education or lack of...it's simply that some people find it a bit hard to believe. We have Xbox one in our household too, so if it works, that's great!

But it doesn't mean people are uneducated because they refuse to fall for any old PR crap.

[bleedsoe9mm]

where's the hacked pc version that runs offline so the community can see the difference and decide for themselves

[blahblah123]

The Google Cloud does not boost frame rates to your email.

Apple's iCloud does not increase fill rate on OpenGL games.

Amazon's Cloud Drive, does not drive you to the supermarket faster.

To avoid another facetious argument, by definition:

a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet and used to store, manage, and process data in place of local servers or personal computers

[randomass171]

That's what I figured the cloud was. I'm not sure what it will do in the long run, but I want to find out, same as any Xbox One fan. I just wish people would just wait until some more concrete demonstrations of it are shown rather than needlessly trashing each other.

[MegaRay]

Keynote: "a bit"

[killzone619]

improves framerate by 2fps

[gamertk421]

Is Thunderhead just another set of servers. Yes and no. Technically yes, but the vast amount of servers dedicated to gaming, with the automatic ability to upscale and downscale dynamically with very little upkeep is huge for devs. Especially at little to no extra cost as it is being offered. This translates to bigger development support, and the ability to focus more on actual development, say of extra content, than trying to fix server issues. This is what excites me.

[Bigpappy]

I think you picked up on the major point in what he had to say. Having severs just jump in and out dependent on the number of users is a huge plus for multiplayer games.

He also said that he can not simply explain the cloud in a sound bite and that it will take a while for the full benefits to be seen in games.

Lots of other commenters have chosen to add their own spin (lie) to what he said. They are saying that he is saying the is just dedicated severs which has been done before. I can't find that in his comments anywhere.

[k3rn3ll]

True. Majority of n4g users will read one line of an article and beat it into the ground as if it was the only thing said. For instance now every making the same comment "he said all the cloud is is dedicated servers". When in actuality he said a whole lot more about the processing capabilities of the servers but since it doesnt help their argument they want to shove those under the rug

[mochachino]

Well it came as a big surprise to Respawn that the game was going xbox/pc exclusive so they must have had some idea of how to make the game work on playstation without Azure.

[choujij]

Good point.

[Belasco]

Why does everyone always seem so angry when it comes to the topic of cloud computing?

[Hicken]

Because you have a dozen silly people- to be nice- that keep claiming the cloud can and will soon do things it can't do.

There are plenty of them above you. They bought into the Microsoft-sponsored BS that the cloud would increase the power of the console threefold or more. They ignore the real world- already present, I might add- applications of the cloud, and the limitations of the cloud compute that's being promised that should be obvious to anybody with more than a cursory knowledge of such things.

Even the smallest amount of knowledge about latency would tell you how improbable this stuff is. Offloading intensive processes top the cloud just isn't feasible for 99% of the world.

Streaming a whole game is one thing; streaming and syncing parts of a game to locally generated parts is another entirely. The latter is simply not practical at this time.

[hello12]

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure, created by Microsoft, for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. It provides both PaaS and IaaS services and supports many different programming languages, tools and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems. Windows Azure was released on February 1, 2010.[1

Datacentres is the cloud.Real and genuine.

The locations of the data centers[8][9] are:

North America
North-central US - Chicago, IL
South-central US - San Antonio, TX
West US - California
East US - Virginia
South America
Brazil (in preview)
Asia
China (mainland) - Beijing
China (mainland) - Shanghai
East Asia - Hong Kong, China
South East Asia - Singapore
Europe
North Europe - Dublin, Ireland
West Europe - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Japan
Japan East - Saitama
Japan West - Osaka
Oceania (announced, coming soon)[10]
Sydney, New South Wales (announced, coming soon)
Melbourne, Victoria (announced, coming soon)

Data centres is why the x box 1 can provide dedicated servers for free and can provide quick systems updates and cloud storage.

Sony doesn't have this kind of worldwide network of servers.

The fact Microsoft has these data centres real places housing servers. Computing can be done on x box 1.

Your going to see physics and rendering been done on the cloud. It may not be at the same scale been done on the very highest PC, but the x box 1 is directly connected to the data servers.

So the physics is been done on the cloud, all the time.

[Masterh0ppa]

And they are building more and more data centers around the globe! They are building another center here in the Netherlands aswell.. Costs 2 billion.

[k3rn3ll]

True. The support of the gaming community has already been shown in this regard. Before TF release all the gamers were worried because their was no Australia servers. Until MS booted those servers up for them a day or so before release and everyone started getting 30ms pings

[Flutterby]

You won't be seeing rendering on the cloud unless you like lots of pop in , any latency at all makes that a waste of time.

[Nunchez]

There is no "power" of the cloud. Maybe I'll be proved wrong later but right now there's zero evidence to back all the cloud stories.

[Julion0715]

I think the problem with ppl is they dnt listen yes ms and other companies are using the cloud for servers at the moment but ms is trying to implement this in games other than server wise they are planning for something big but with Internet not being the same for everyone it's hard for them to bring it to life right now that's why they are demonstrating trying to find ways to fit some parts in games now give them time ppl

[corvusmd]

Nice, it's good to see more and more devs say that they are happy working with the Azure cloud/servers. It does help point out that aside from dedicated servers and compute abilities, another often over-looked, yet equally important aspect is how easy and flexible Azure is to use...great news for devs is great news for gamers.

Wow people get really butthurt over this topic. Everytime the slightest news comes out about the cloud, waves of fanboys come and try and smother it. If it doesn't work...let it speak for itself. Trash talking it without any proof just looks scared and desperate. The outrageous claims aren't anything that MS said...it's either delusion Xbox Fanboys or Sony fanboy trolls that exaggerate them to make it seem even more ridiculous and easy to dismiss. If it really doesn't work, and it's really just a PR stunt...then there is nothing to fear, just stay quiet and let it fail...MS will fall flat on it's face and all her fanboys will look stupid and have no choice but to admit they are wrong...and if they still don't WHO CARES??? Does it kill your gaming enjoyment? Let it work itself out, even MS has said TONS of times that the Cloud will show itself in time, it won't be immediate. It IS already working and doing things, true, most aren't noticeable, but they are there...it's why the Devs at Respawn said that ONLY MS had a solution to making Titanfall run at the MOMENT (not really sure why this fact keeps getting "forgotten"). Aside from flexible dedicated servers, it IS providing compute services that allow games to run...true, nothing like the closed demo we saw last week, but if in the future Azure is able to do even a fraction of that, it will be an amazing update that costs little to nothing to the home console. So WHY are we upset about getting better console support?

[Mac420]

Well when MS claims it will increase box power etc etc etc, That's when you get people bashing it, everytime I read a Dev that worked with Azure, they have stated nothing other then dedicated servers. I had dedicated servers on just about every original Xbox an Ps2 title so this is nothing new.

Any of the popular PC games always have dedicated servers or there boycotted by the community. People on consoles are just chumps an demand nothing ever, they just take what they shell out. So ranting on about the cloud is just stupid, what they are doing with it, is nothing really new, just a lot more cost effective.

An I bet Dev's that don't make there games exclusive to the One pay a pretty penny for that service. This is MS we are talking about, you think they offer that for free to 3rd parties.

Also why wouldn't RESPAWN have good praise for the Console that paid for exclusive rights to there game. Probably only reason EA would still let them operate after those horrible sale numbers versus the cost of production. This would have been another closed studio without that fat MS paycheck.

I have no plans on buying either console till they actually prove there worth, eventually I'll own both just much rather keep building my PC currently. Some
of you just eat up anything these companies throw at you.

Need to give the Marketing teams in both companies big bonuses, because you fanboys gobble these PR stunts up like turkey on thanksgiving.

[LightDiego]

Cloud is very powerful, specially when he uses Knights of the Round.

[bornsinner]

this is getting old, stop talking about it & make it happen, i'm tired of 720p, sub-hd games because that's all we see on xbone.

if watch dogs is not 1080p on xbone then you might as well give up & make the xbox 4 without a spy cam & better hardware.

[pakua]

There's a reason you have one bubble. You're a stealth troll, any true gamer wouldn't care about resolutions as much as you Sony fanboys.

Watch Dogs may be awful but hey, as long as it's 1080p and 60 fps then who cares right?

[JasonKCK]

People ask MS and developers to show proof. MS shows proof and some people are still in mass denial.

[choujij]

I have an unrelated question, is microsoft.com still employing the "power of" Linux?

[candy_mafia]

It will most likely help with physics and other intensive CPU tasks, and that's a good thing.

But what about those with lousy net connections? Won't there be advantages/disadvantages during MP games? ..Or will those with whack net get a lesser game?

And those fanboy people keep saying 'wait and see what cloud can do?'...but most people just wanna game now.

What we waiting for?

>Wait Here

[larrysdirtydrawss]

they're getting a paycheck from ms,so they spilled a little pr bs. why ddnt ms use this cloudpower for their main titanfall xone game. graphic/framerate cold have used a big boost...

[Belasco]

What an utterly exhausted and boring opinion. Please, do show us proof that MS pays off these devs to say nice things, otherwise stop bringing it up.

[Skate-AK]

Off topic kinda but I just seen a TV commercial for something called My Cloud. If Microsoft wants to push the cloud they should talk about it in commercials. More people see those than executives using buzz words in articles.

[Illusive_Man]

Anybody who has ever used Amazon EC2 images, Z Clusters, or GALAXY knows distributed computing To offload certain tasks in the background in reaL time is a real thing. Azure can be used as a backbone to accomplish many of the same things. The real beauty is offloading to the cloud frees up the CPU to do other things. No it won't boost graphics by 10X but it can increase overall system effiency.

Honestly I don't why there is so much vitriol regarding the term cloud. It is what says it is. Everyone knows cloud is powered by dedicated servers. The key differentiation is what is the cloud being tasked to do: it could be running a next gen sequencing pipeline, folding proteins like folding@home (remember that one on PS3),non local storage, or calculating AI. It seems only Sony fanboy have made the cloud into some sort of superpowered mythical beast, maybe out of their own insecurities.

[forcefullpower]

The reason is dedicated servers have existed for a long time. It's just ms are trying fool people into thinking this is some thing new.

Me and my friends have used local dedicated servers on pc's for Lan gaming for a long time.

[Illusive_Man]

They aren't trying to fool anybody. Cloud is just a catchy name for dedicated servers.

Difference between what you and your friend used is that they are using workstations for calculations in game. You guys only used it to reduce network ping and lag. There were no additional calculations being offloaded. You're really grasping at straws.

[forcefullpower]

They could easily release a server client for lan gaming for titan fall. Stop trying to make out that it can't be run on an average pc. All it has to do is the same as a deidcated server and run some below average AI and there placement in the enviroment.