During the second keynote of the Build developer conference in San Francisco, Microsoft showcased Age of Ascent, a browser game currently in public alpha that uses the Azure cloud services to handle enormous amount of data.
"James Niesewand, CEO of Illyriad Games, talked with us about Age of Ascent, their cross-platform Ultra-MMO powered by Microsoft's Azure cloud."
James Niesewand, who is working on Age of Ascent, confirmed that Azure's cloud effectively offloads computing power. He also shared an opinion on why we're not seeing more cloud based games as of yet.
According to the developer, it's mostly a matter of mentality. Most studios are stuck with the traditional infrastructure.
I'm thinking the title means "reluctant" not " reclutant" but just to be sure I looked it up....to my dismay I found no definition someone please help find conspiring truth of this word.
I hope consoles were different with each one its exclusive features... Devs are really lazy. But it's for the manufacturer to lead the way
@XisThatKid
Reluctant is another word for hesitant or in similar term scared or afraid, so his saying they are scared to try something new/out of the ordinary in using Azure.
More? Crackdown is the only game using it in a meaningful way.
People should start asking themselves why that is, if it's so great.
I think it's just ahead of it's time and will play a huge role in future gaming. Once developers learn and understand the tech then if it's no being used it will be questionable. Right now CD3 is the only game to be used as a tech demo to show a few possibilities.
Candy stop isn't it weird we're three years in and the cloud hasn't been used like it was promised in the premier of xbox? The idea of cloud was falsely advertised for this generation if you yourself agree it's ahead of its time.
Blacktar that's not weird at all.
Look how long VR has been talked and tried but never taken off until now.
Technology that is too advance takes time and like candy shop said it will play a huge role when it does take off and developers see the benefits
If crackdown plays out as promised I see devs jumping on this. Everyone is waiting to see if ms can deliver before investing a 2-3 year dev cycle.
BlackTar the cloud was made out to be a much bigger part of Xbox than it ended up being because of the original always-on vision which would have allowed worlds like Crackdown multiplayer to be in and helping all single player and multiplayer games. Ever since they abandoned the always-online vision, I haven't heard a fat lot of PR about it and I follow news very closely. Crackdown is somewhat of a resurgence of the whole 'power of the cloud' thing.
"Games like Titanfall on the Xbox used Azure to provide locality, dedicated servers and an external AI system, and similarly Crackdown3 uses the compute power of Azure to make entire cities destructible."
Crackdown 2 is only using it for MP, somewhat like how it is in MMOs in such with dedicated servers and where AI is controled, physics are done on the server and not on the host computer / console (except in cases like destiny where the host DCing could freeze Crota on his knee which was later fixed), and have have huge world events.
Single player won't be as they said some people do game offline, and imagine playing single player with a huge building exploding and suddenly your internet drops... People complain enough as it is already with needing to always be connected for certain single player games. Having your game freeze / crash / physics go crazy because your connection drops (each and every time / not everyone has the best internet connection in the world) for a single player only game would not make for happy gamers.
The tech is new and they have to start somewhere.
People didn't even believe in cloud computing and the demo put so many haters to shame. We still have yet to see it work in the wild but if it does, expect more devs to jump on board and more crow to be eaten
"People should start asking themselves why that is, if it's so great."
But people HAVE asked that...and this developer provides his perspective on why that's (currently) the case...in this very article you're commenting on.
Except fin VR want touted as the shiznit three years ago as a killer feature and a feature that would closed the stupid gap. My only complaint is they false advertised the timing of cloud and it's place in this gen. It could take off in a year sure but that's well into a gen that both companies are talking about upgrading early in.
I think you're wrong septic about people not believing in it. I think people didn't believe in the infrastructure of it and it's readiness. Those things are still issue to this day. I'm pretty sure most people understand that technology moves forward and cloud isn't fake they just don't see it being ready and they were right so far. Anyways I'm down for cloud but am not down for always online.
Also just for fun with people complaining about devs having to spend extra time time on making a game run in ps4 and neo isn't it a bit hypocritical to not apply that thinking to multi platform cloud utilized games?
@coolbeans
I should clarify myself. Ask major players in the videogame industry why they aren't using it.
Even Microsoft's own big releases like Halo 5 and Gears 4 don't use it.
Well for starters it's more than just crackdown. Secondly dev time, be patient. Lastly dev don't want to. That like asking why few devs wont use vr if it's so great. A) not for everyone B) dev time C) limitations. Can be said about both
Halo 5 uses Azure for dedicated servers if I'm not mistaken. I constantly have issues with disconnects and stuff. In fact I have less problems with Black Ops 3s peer to peer system.....
Did you read the article? Seems devs would have to make a whole new engine to include cloud tech. And from what he said a whole new thought process.
Funny how this guy also validates in detail what cloud can do and you guys still brush it off. But whats new from Sony Mafia..lol
because its new and most developers are just getting the tools to start implementing it...you just don't change your whole way of thinking overnight. There is a learning curve to anything new.
There's also the issue of cost. It means devs have to factor that into the equation and MS are very good at moving the goalposts on the fly. i.e. You just bought a wp10m with 32GB memory phone with 40GB auto backup to the cloud - perfect, 2 months later and MS says ahh that's now changed to 5GB and you can now pay for more.
In that instance it's more effective to just go back to either using a personal cloud or memory stick.
The idea of the cloud seems to scare playstation fans. Obviously because Sony doesnt have the underlying infrastructure to compete.
Did you read the f***ing article at all because if you did he explains why more are not using it... #genius
It has always been and always will be and issue with bandwidth. The amount of time it takes for your system to process local data vs their server processing data and sending it back to through the network to your machine to be processed. There are times where you could de-sync your machine a couple seconds back during say cut scenes and such to use this technology but as far as realtime this will always be the hurdle it faces.
IMO a better route would be to make console modular..but still proprietary to keep the developers interested. Have 5 different skews of hardware ranging from base to around 1000 bucks or some shit. That way we can just process locally and better.
It would be cool to see one of these companies make a piece of software that would use your local devices on your local network as a resource for processing. This would still have the issue of packets traversing a network but in way less time and way less points of failure.
Source: Information Technology Professional (I.T)
One of the things I'd suggested several times in the past was for MS to do a local cloud but I always got razzed about it. Using their ethernet port to offload processing that isn't affected much by latency, and reduce latency in general by vastly reducing the communication distance made sense to me. It wouldn't be as efficient as SLI or anything, but could still provide significant gains if the right types of workloads were given to the local cloud network.
You also nailed down what Phil talked about recently: Making future consoles modular with proprietary upgrades.
If it was as convenient as this dev is making it out to sound, they would use it. It's just that simple. It has nothing to do with "mentality." If it took even a tiny bit of burden or stress off of developers, they would use it.
What it comes down to is that most games are built for a larger audience than just MP connected players. It's a decent size market that can return profit, but most games do not focus on the online solely. The ones that do have solutions for their needs, and it comes down more to game design as most game designs don't really require the cloud, and using cloud tech in a connected fashion like this can cost money which publishers aren't willing to spend when there is no real reason to need to.
The second you require a player to be connected, is the second where you've cut off half your potential sales for a game, and insure that whatever you do put out will require ongoing financial support.
All I know is the best servers I ever played on was on TitanFall on PC... and they were Azure Cloud, never had a laggy game... those servers are amazing... Wish more games would use them...
From what I played on them they are Flawless...
Every MMO in existence uses the tech he's describing here.
What he's talking about here outside of Titanfall is not what most people here discuss when it comes to cloud.
Game streaming is the most obvious use for it. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft announces a service similar to PlayStation Now in the future.
I have a feeling that the next GTA and Fallout or Skyrim will use the cloud.
Those open world games are getting huge and memory and processing power are becoming an issue and expensive which is where the Cloud comes in since it offloads tons of stress from consoles.
Could be. But the real application is in multiplayer games - for instance, Crackdown 3 uses the cloud only there while destruction is scaled back in single player because it has to be playable offline.
Cloud technology can translate in a huge jump forward for the MMO genre
Alex you sure about that?
I read somewhere that the single player will use the cloud 100% but will scale back without the out the cloud if you are not connected or if your internet goes out.
I can't wait for the next Elder Scrolls. Like what Alexious said it would work better for the MMO genre
But then the bottleneck would be peoples slow internet connections.
Cloud tech is fine for servers or storing small files like save data...Etc. Its just not a very good alternative to local rendering and computing.
It might be even more important for consoles, given that they are usually behind for obvious reasons in terms of raw power.
Age of Ascent, a record-breaking MMO that registered over 50K players in a single battle thanks to Microsoft's cloud, will be available on Xbox One too with crossplay functionality.
The Cloud usage of this game is particularly interesting. Hopefully more MMO games will do the same.
This sounds really promising for the XB1 library, but I hope it doesn't just become a weaker PC.
Love to give this game a try with cross play
"Did you have to tone down the graphics or scale of the game on Xbox One at all? Can you tell us the target resolution and frame rate?"
No, we haven’t had to change the graphics or scale in any way. Most of the hard-stuff-concurrency-scale of AoA is handed off to the cloud anyway; so the actual device that renders the game world matters fairly little. "
"As the AoA code broadly exists in a “write-once” environment, we really don’t have any particular platform preference."
That there is fantastic...UWP seem to be real big with this
It is a browser game (as he said, it plays in Chrome/Safari/Firefox/whatever ), so the UWP stuff is probably just a wrapper to get in on Xbox. Since he says most of the work is done in the cloud, whatever is on the client is probably something like a movie player (or more like the remote-play apps for xbox/ps4 on pc).
Like DethWish above has said. It's a browser based MMO type game for multiple platforms like Chromebook, Chrome, Firefox or Edge.
This is the minimum specs on the AoA website.
"Minimum Specs For The Game
We have written the game to run even on low-end hardware. It’s been tested on a $200 Chromebook and it works just fine at a decent fps. To play Age of Ascent, there’s nothing to install or download; it runs natively in the browser without plugins. All you need is a modern, up-to-date, WebGL-capable browser such as Edge, Chrome or Firefox."
Personally I've never heard of the game so as a PC gamer it doesn't interest me in the slightest. This feels like Microsoft trying to convert any old game to UWP to make their point that it's possible but they never once asked if this is what anyone wanted as usual.
I have better space games to play on PC like Stellaris and Space Pirates and Zombies 2 for instance :)
Interested to know if it was already running through UWP on Windows before being ported or if it's really easy to move from .exe to uwp.
It's browser based so there is no UWP or exe on PC. It's all done through a WebGL-capable browser like Chrome or Edge and powered by Microsoft cloud servers, Azure.
Ah fair enough. So I guess they're using it as an example of how it's easy to port to uwp.
How can you deny?!
This could be amazing on AAA multiplayer games !
I can't wait to see how much this effects the Crackdown 3 beta, so excited for that!
It looks bad though..
How do you pronounce Azure?