Microsoft Spending $700 Million to Back Xbox Live Cloud Servers

WickedFire

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Apr 25, 2011
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This could go comically wrong for them in the event of a fire or other such disaster. Have they not heard the phrase "don't put all your eggs in one basket"? If that place goes up in flames, so does microsoft essentially.
 

ViciousTide

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Aug 5, 2011
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Even Netflix requires an internet connection, though i download then watch the movie off line anytime i wish and for the rest of infinity, on my offline demand.
 

Griffolion

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Aug 18, 2009
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It will be interesting to see how this plays out, especially with a rumoured "titanic" re-organisation [http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/23/4457082/microsoft-reorg-expected-by-july-1st-rumor] imminent at Microsoft.
 

Worgen

Follower of the Glorious Sun Butt.
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Apr 1, 2009
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Whatever, just wash your hands.
It sounds like they are trying to say they are dedicated to this concept but to me it just sounds like they are admitting to wasting a huge amount of money on something no one really asked for.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

I never asked for this
Sep 8, 2011
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FoolKiller said:
Yes.... Office 365

The thing where Microsoft even eliminates your ability to have access to the latest office software without a connection. Instead, you license it from them yearly. Ugh.
This is one of the dumbest things Microsoft could have done. They want to be like Apple so much but they're doing everything wrong. Why would anyone switch to Office 365 if they can simply use older versions? Hell, a lot of businesses are still using Windows Xp with Office 2003. They have no reason to change. And they won't if the only thing the change will do is increase the cost of business. The only thing they'll manage to do with this is create a demand for another product better than Office. And some smart fellow will gladly pitch in and take away that piece of the pie from Microsoft. Their greed is making them retarded.
 

Canadamus Prime

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Jun 17, 2009
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Somehow this doesn't seem scalable to me. Like the are banking on making a fuckton of money back on their cloud based services which I'm not sure that many people are willing to buy into just yet esp. after their recent PR fuckups.
 

Kiya

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Mar 22, 2012
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Sounds interesting, but I hope they have invested in some servers in other cities as well. If all their servers are concentrated in one location then it won't matter how many they have when everyone on the planet with an Xbox is getting bottlenecked as they try to access them at the same time.

Take look at Valve - who probably have more experience providing simultaneous digital downloads/cloud/online community services worldwide than anyone else on the planet at this point. They have servers in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington D.C. - and that is just in the U.S.
 

Gray Firion

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Mar 5, 2012
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So they're boosting their servers... in a country with quite a few regions that still have underwhelming internet connections... and apparently they aren't quite finished with the idea of putting every game on the cloud somehow, pretty much enforcing Always On anyway...

The Xbox 180. "It keeps doing them, and it's STILL only half as good as the 360."

Guess they really didn't learn their lesson, nor do they plan to hun?
 

Ace O'Hagen

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May 28, 2013
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from a comedic standpoint, it's a shame they aren't spending One Billion Dollars on this ... think of all the Austin Powers jokes that could be had.

from a practical standpoint, they're going to have to move a lot of units to recoup their expenses on the servers alone and that's assuming the set precedence doesn't occur again dragging the servers down with them.

either way, it'll be fun to watch
 

Hero in a half shell

It's not easy being green
Dec 30, 2009
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Kalezian said:
the generation after this, I really hope they include the ability to connect consoles together to increase power.

Downside to that though is you could end up with games that "requires 12 PS5's" or "runs best with 60 Xbox we ran out of imaginations"


then again, we can already go crazy with upgrading gaming PC's, so would we really need that feature for consoles.
But Mr. Microsoft executive, what if we don't want to buy the next gen "Xbox Omni" because it requires us to stream live videolinks of every room in our house, submit to marketing surveys before we can play a game and costs $150 a month in various online fees, and the controller contains a GPS device that must be permanently grafted to our forearm with an industrial welder?

Well if you don't want those valuable services that we estimate raises our consoles value to a bajillion dollars, you're clearly a backward person who isn't a true gamer, and should just deal with it, but we do have a console for you, it's called 45 Xbox Ones connected together by our patented Microsoft HDMI power cables, only $499.99 for a pack of 10 cables available at your nearest Game store!
 

Lightknight

Mugwamp Supreme
Nov 26, 2008
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Great, now they just need to spend 100s of billions in internet infrastructure to make those cloud processers mean a damn thing if they're ever going to do serious processing and not just the lie of Sim City processing for the purpose of DRM.
 

M920CAIN

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May 24, 2011
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MrBaskerville said:
I don´t really like that they are relying this much on Cloud technology, frankly i don´t trust it one bit. Maybe i´m just old, but i´m not too fond of the idea that everything is happening in a cloud that is completely beyond my control. I would prefer to have things happening locally, hopefully this will only be used for multiplayer games and not singleplayer.
I agree with you to an extent. I like the idea of cloud and local storage because of it's redundancy, both worlds combined to give a lil' bit more assurance. Just local or just cloud on the other hand is the riskier path for the long term storage of computing habits.
 

Reeve

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Feb 8, 2013
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Onlive [http://games.onlive.com/?region=US] is reliable and that streams entire games while Microsoft will only be using the Cloud for stuff to help the games run. I doubt they'll mess it up.
 

Ed130 The Vanguard

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Sep 10, 2008
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Reeve said:
Onlive [http://games.onlive.com/?region=US] is reliable and that streams entire games while Microsoft will only be using the Cloud for stuff to help the games run. I doubt they'll mess it up.
Not really, Onlive was very situational and depended entirely on your own internet connection being both stable and able to handle large amounts of data.

Which apparently thanks to US communication companies isn't available to everyone, or even just to people in cities.

Seriously why doesn't your government step in and do something about it, profits are fine and good for the companies and shareholders in question but when it comes at the expanse of customers and the country itself it gets a little weird.
 

KoudelkaMorgan

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Jul 31, 2009
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All this tells us, for certain, is that if anyone wanted to set M$ back by $700,000,000 they could go to Des Moines and trash that site.

Not that I'm endorsing such a thing, but seriously why do we need to know the location of this basket filled with all their eggs?

I imagine if I were to make a rollercoaster based around a graph of M$'s stock these last few months it would be pretty sick lol