If Xbox One can be used offline, then was the Cloud a lie?

[DoPo]

The 24h-checkin couldn't have anything to do with "the cloud", since if you want to outsource calculations you have to be online the whole time you are doing that (obviously). Its not like the XB1 would have recharged its mystic powers of "The Cloud" once every 24 hours.

Exactly what needs to be said. I think there is a fair bit of confusion what the cloud is and how it operates. Which is NOT helped by Microsoft and others using it the term to mean "magic happens here".

Basically the whole idea was to have normally client-sided processes would be run server-sided to reduce the load on the console itself. Ironically, this is actually quite similiar to Sony's upcoming Genkai streaming service.

Erm, actually no - you can have cloud offloads without streaming. You could, for example, use it for storage, but that's boring, another use I just made up would be map generation: say, you want to generate a big random map for a game, that could be done in the cloud and you just download the result - it could be faster than doing it client-side, depending on how complex they go with the map. Or many other larger-scale asynchronous computation that needs to be done. Sony provide game streaming which is, again, using the cloud but not the only use for it.

 

[J Tyran]

Shit, publishers started pushing always-online at E3 with games like The Division, The Crew and Titanfall, and everybody lapped it up.

These were online multiplayer games. You're saying it as if people are happy to have crappy DRM a la Diablo III and Sim City.

Congratulations. You've just worked out how publishers are going to push for games to be always-online in future. By selling everything as an MMO. Isn't that exactly what EA did with SimCity?

Depends on how "honest" the description the game is, if its an MMOFPS for example and really benefits from being online its fine. If its just bullshit DRM by another name like Sim Shitty then its another thing altogether.

My feeling is we will get some of both.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

TBH, i though it was all BS anyway. "The Clooooud" (said in the voices of the aliens in Toy Story) seemed to be nothing but science fantasy.
Maybe when we have insane internet speeds
"this game would not be possible without the cloud"
so all the games in MS's E3 presentation wont work now? oh dear

 

[Dragonbums]

The cloud wouldn't be a lie if you can use the Xbone offline.
However it will only be utilized that people who want it. Which is better in the long run because that means more space for everyone because not everyone is forced to use it.

 

[erbi79]

Of course the cloud being required was a lie ^^

just astonishing how they come out now and openly admit that they lied, oh microsoft...

I am also astonished by many gamers now losing all their pride and jumping back in, as if nothing had happened...

It took Sony three years of being hurt to finally learn the lesson, and word is still out if they actually did, now some people think m$ learned it in a couple of days? grow up ^^

If you really like Microsoft and want them to learn their lesson they really need to be punished for a while, until the lesson sticks with them, right now some people are teaching them the wrong lesson,
namely: you can try anything you want and in the end a sorry is enough for me to still support you

 

[Chris Tian]

Cloud computing M$ was talking about was just a made up reason to have DRM. That said there's something fishy about it that they have changed their thoughts on it.

There is nothing really fishy about that. Its probably just that, after E3, the market analysts and prognosis guys run up to Mattricks office, kicked in the door, screaming like they were on fire, waving some pie charts, bar graphs and number sheets around. He looked at the numbers, started weeping and flipped the non-existend impossible to flip "kill DRM"-switch.

The 24h-checkin couldn't have anything to do with "the cloud", since if you want to outsource calculations you have to be online the whole time you are doing that (obviously). Its not like the XB1 would have recharged its mystic powers of "The Cloud" once every 24 hours.

Exactly what needs to be said. I think there is a fair bit of confusion what the cloud is and how it operates. Which is NOT helped by Microsoft and others using it the term to mean "magic happens here".

Basically the whole idea was to have normally client-sided processes would be run server-sided to reduce the load on the console itself. Ironically, this is actually quite similiar to Sony's upcoming Genkai streaming service.

Erm, actually no - you can have cloud offloads without streaming. You could, for example, use it for storage, but that's boring, another use I just made up would be map generation: say, you want to generate a big random map for a game, that could be done in the cloud and you just download the result - it could be faster than doing it client-side, depending on how complex they go with the map. Or many other larger-scale asynchronous computation that needs to be done. Sony provide game streaming which is, again, using the cloud but not the only use for it.

I think MS is not so far off with the cool potential they say it has. Its just completly removed and independet from some arbiatrary 24h-checkin system.
You mention the map thing, and I think a bunch of creative devs will come up with more cool ideas for that. Since all that is still possible even without every-24h-calling-home-drm.

 

[Chris Tian]

TBH, i though it was all BS anyway. "The Clooooud" (said in the voices of the aliens in Toy Story) seemed to be nothing but science fantasy.

I dont think its fantasy, I mean there are lots of games for wich you need a fairly good internet connection already.
Like I said above, I think there is lots of potential for the things devs will be able to do with The Cloud.

Its just that MS acted like it is some incomprehensible magic we consumer peasants could never understand in order to spoonfeed us a big steamy pile of hot sh*t.

 

[fix-the-spade]

So does this prove that Microsoft was lying about the Cloud and its benefits, or does the DRM reversal hamper what could have been an impressive feature of the Xbox One.

Of course they were, remember how Simcity is completely reliant on cloud computing? Not the same company, but the same principle.

No doubt they're going to have cloud storage and that will be nice, but cloud processing isn't really viable for home users and our choppy internet connections. Just another case of decide on action, dream up justifications afterwards.

 

[DoPo]

I think MS is not so far off with the cool potential they say it has. Its just completly removed and independet from some arbiatrary 24h-checkin system.

Exactly - the cloud can enable interesting stuff to happen, but 24 hour checkins aren't a requirement for that. And Microsoft et al didn't really elaborate on it either - their press conference was like a gathering of weathermen - you could hear "cloud" said way more than it should have been. And apparently "only the cloud enables us to have these cool features" without even saying what the features are and how it's utilised. *sigh* On the other hand, the one game that did go a little bit into it (Forza? The Crew? It's the game that had "the drivatar") actually made sense to have periodic calls to the cloud. Doesn't need to be strictly 24 hours and it doesn't need to stop you from playing if you miss them but it makes sense to send back data to the server fairly regularly.

You mention the map thing, and I think a bunch of creative devs will come up with more cool ideas for that.

Hence why I'm not a creative dev Yeah, it was a crappy example but it's the first that came to mind. You could even have smarter enemies and machine learning employed, I suppose, changing world and so on. What I really want to see is a genetic algorithm employed and/or other AI that can be crowd sourced. It would take a bit of time to "take in" but the results could be amazing.

 

[Lightknight]

No, it means that you don't have to check in every 24 hours. That's all. When cloud processing becomes necessary for the Xbone to continue competing on the same level as the PS4 then always on will be required. This depends on what they use the cloud processing for. If it's something that can be left out of the game then you'll be able to play them (maybe) but it'll be nerfed visually. If connection is required for those games, and it is likely, then it's always on.

So them giving up the 24-hour check-in isn't really them giving anything up in the long run since they probably expect the last two or three years of their console to have mostly cloud computing in it.

Remember, cloud computing will require an excellent connection. They say it can make the system multiple times more powerful but can you imagine the kind of traffic that would have to uploaded and downloaded instantly to make such data transfer not lag the hell out of your single player games?

Yeah, that's all Skyrim needed, lag from loss of internet connection too, despite being a single player game.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

TBH, i though it was all BS anyway. "The Clooooud" (said in the voices of the aliens in Toy Story) seemed to be nothing but science fantasy.

I dont think its fantasy, I mean there are lots of games for wich you need a fairly good internet connection already.
Like I said above, I think there is lots of potential for the things devs will be able to do with The Cloud.

oh yeah, i know there are MMO's and all sorts of PvP games that need it.
i mean all the amazing calculations that were going to give every Xbone an Xbone cubed online to do all the hard processing then send it to people homes, without a hitch/lag/delay

 

[Chris Tian]

You mention the map thing, and I think a bunch of creative devs will come up with more cool ideas for that.

Hence why I'm not a creative dev Yeah, it was a crappy example but it's the first that came to mind. You could even have smarter enemies and machine learning employed, I suppose, changing world and so on. What I really want to see is a genetic algorithm employed and/or other AI that can be crowd sourced. It would take a bit of time to "take in" but the results could be amazing.

Well, I did not mean ideas that are better than yours, but more ideas that are also cool.

I have no clue what a genetic algorithm is (sounds math-y) but I like the sound of better AI.

 

[DoPo]

I have no clue what a genetic algorithm is (sounds math-y) but I like the sound of better AI.

It's actually not math-y at all. In fact, biology crops up more there. And it's a really cool concept, here is how it works
1. You take a problem and find some way to represent the solutions. We won't worry about that right now but generally, the solutions is encoded in what it's called "chromosomes".
2. The GA generates a bunch of these solutions, mostly at random. Thus, you get your population. Also, that's your first generation.
3. A fitness function checks each chromosome and grades it in some way - so you generally know which ones are better than others.
4. Now comes the part of natural selection - the GA selects some random chromosomes from the population - it usually has a higher chance of getting the good ones but you also want some of the less good (for...reasons I don't need to get into - it's due to how GA operate).
5. The selected chromosomes are the "parents" and which, after crossover (which is random), generate new "children". And yeah, that actually happens. I'm talking actual terminology here. This gets you the next generation.
6. Now repeat 3-5.

What happens is that you eventually evolve better and better solutions in the pool. If we assume that for a chromosome to be "better" it needs to be evaluated as closer to zero as possible, you could start with a population of chromosomes with grades 300-400 then after few generations you're hovering about 50 and eventually you can even get to zero. Maybe. At any rate, you start off with random solutions, randomly do stuff with them, you could even throw in random mutations, and in time you'll get a good solution. And it works for a really wide variety of problems, tol.


How they are usually employed is that you deploy them and come back in, say, a day or a week to see how they are going. But, that works for any solution you can easily compute the fitness of - you could try finding a mathematical solution to a problem or other "easy" stuff for a computer, but, say, you can't evaluate everything that way. Say, if the GA is tasked with making a picture, it can't evaluate how good it looks. But with people playing and being online, you could, actually offload the fitness function to them. This could just be intertwined with another game, so you don't just go "Oh, this deserves an 8 but that other one a 12" - you could just measure player reaction time or similar when faced with a generated content. Of course, it would take time for it to get good results, especially on more complex stuff but it could just be a building block for the a next game which would use the results.

Similarly, you can use players to train neural nets. The NNs are...somewhat similar to GAs, in that they are modelled after nature (NNs tend to represent a "brain"...somewhat) and you also need to train them until they get better. At any rate, they could have more of an impact on enemy AI, as GAs provide solutions but not really "behaviour", while NNs generally filter information and react in some way to it.


This is a video of simple NN trained bots. Their behaviour is not complex - they shoot you until reduced to low health in which case they start to flee because they are in danger. But they will turn around and shoot you again if you're not looking at them (i.e., they aren't in danger of getting killed).

Now imagine evolving enemy style and tactics with that. They can learn your weaknesses and how best to kill you. Quite, cool eh I believe it could also be used in games

 

[Chris Tian]

TBH, i though it was all BS anyway. "The Clooooud" (said in the voices of the aliens in Toy Story) seemed to be nothing but science fantasy.

I dont think its fantasy, I mean there are lots of games for wich you need a fairly good internet connection already.
Like I said above, I think there is lots of potential for the things devs will be able to do with The Cloud.

oh yeah, i know there are MMO's and all sorts of PvP games that need it.
i mean all the amazing calculations that were going to give every Xbone an Xbone cubed online to do all the hard processing then send it to people homes, without a hitch/lag/delay

You are probably right, that it would be more of a hassle to have the internet conection you would need than the advantages of having the cloud - processing power.

On the other hand, thats not really where I see the potential of the cloud, since games today are not really limited by the hardware power. I mean even today publishers and devs cry about how expensive new graphics etc. are.

snip

Holy wall of text!

That sound actually relativley simple, at least the principles of it. Writing the earlier post about liking better AI I thought about a Total War kind of game where the AI could learn from other players and use that against you. With the Neural Networks and a cloud AI that gets regularly updated and in return regularly updates the AI of your game something like that could actually be possible.