AlexGlass

Don't need to remember it, I use it about once a week to try out free demos that my laptop can't run because it has an IntelHD gen 1 card. I love it. Look forward to them upgrading to GRID and hope they get GTA5. Will save me hundreds from having to upgrade my PC or buy another current gen console.

Doesn't really have a bearing on how X1's hybrid cloud processing will pan out though. OnLive's easy pie compared to what MS is attempting. Just shows people don't really know much when it comes to this.

Yeah I'm sure they wake up every day putting in place practices and procedures that give you wet dreams. I'll bet anything in the world the company and people building world wide data centers and networks, and spending billions on intelligent human beings and manufacturing are collectively much smarter than you are when it comes to the world's network infrastructure and capabilities.

The ISP/consumer war is a completely different war.

But have you actually looked at the stats of how much bandwidth the code would require? How much compressed code is able to run? How much bandwidth does an A.I. string take up? How much bandwidth does a compressed string of A.I. code require? More or less than your typical video stream? More or less than Netflix?

Any ideas?

Yeah, I don't think anyone has this info but there's a whole lot of "experts" that think they have it all figured out and that it doesn't work.

Just out of curiosity, but you don't think MS took a look at the same obvious problems you look at, and noticed the same issue? You actually believe they designed something that WON'T work for their 40+ million Xbox Live user base? Really?

Well all I have to say is that a lot of people who have ignorantly dug their heels into the "PR nonsense" idea will have an uncomfortable time in gaming forums over the course of this generation. This kind of stuff is just going to keep coming.

I'm not naive. I consider myself to be a pretty informed, intelligent individual who has done his homework and have a strong base for my beliefs. I have been researching this type of info any time a new console generation has come out since 1994.

There is plenty of evidence this is viable tech and has been used for years. All I can do is point this out, but it's up to you to get informed. Cloud streaming services have been in existence for a long time and all this is, is a combination of the two.

http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/papers/CloudLight13/CloudLightTechReport13.mp4

What Nvidia just recently demonstrated with their server based real time indirect lighting, is exactly what MS wants to do with the Xbox One, and it is perfectly doable on Azure as well. But people have done more than that on Azure. It can be used to run applications, as a compute server, as a render farm as a streaming cloud service. It's flexible. It's capable of running programs such as Audesk in real time, which performs everything from running the application, to 3D modeling, to rendering, to physics, all in real time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N32bUb1CNQc

In this case it's running the application, computing geometry, rendering, running a lighting engine. It's being used as a cloud streaming service, all in real time. It can certainly run a portion of that code. That should be a breeze. The only trick is local synchronization.

If you understand a little bit about how it works, and do a bit more research than your typical gaming forum affair, it's not hard to figure it out. If you still want to believe it doesn't work after seeing things like that, then the issue isn't the proof, it's simply likely the fact you just don't know what you are looking at. It's not about "can it work" since that was answered decades ago, but rather what are the limitations and what type of applications can it work for and can it work smoothly for everyone connected. There's only three limiting factors. Latency, bandwidth and cost. Latency decides what type of code you run and bandwidth decides how much of it. The last portion is whether it makes financial sense for develoeprs, which is really what's been the biggest hurdle for bringing this tech out to the public, and now MS has a cheap offer to developers. That's all. Since they already built this gigantic network for their computer business, it costs them little to nothing to also allow it to be used for their gaming business.

I just love what they are doing, and I generally stay away from things that don't interest me, and don't care much for participating in trashing the other competitor just because I love what MS is doing. However when that kind of stuff inundades Xbox One threads, I won't have an issue picking it apart.

What I think is sad, is that people think I'm a viral marketer for being on the Xbox forum, in an Xbox thread, being excited about the Xbox. Why the hell are you guys here? Isn't the point of discussing games, discussing things that you find exciting? Or does everyone just generally bitch and complain on the internet today?

Maybe you guys should actually start worrying about what is exciting to you, games, tech, whatever...and stop worrying about the noise.

Mattrick is no longer with Microsoft. Not that I agree, because I happen to like the original vision, but whatever, that's what the masses want so be it.

You're right, it's people like us though that initially buys consoles, but not the hardheaded types and it doesn't just mean people with forum accounts. People who want NEW stuff, new tech, like me, and Sony has done jack shit to convince me that this GPU advantage is going to do anything for my core games. They have shown me Killzone 4 and Infamous 3, pretty much canned Move, and told me Gaikai will be used to for streaming PS3 games. Will it allow for MASSIVE differences that create NEW gaming experiences? Will it completely change the way A.I. behaves? Will it create new genres? Or will it give me a better texture here and there?

I'm supposed to be excited? I'm freaking bored man! I'm bored of those games. I've been bored of this console generation for years. Bored out of my mind. And the only ones trying to take some risks and do something exciting is MS. Sony's going low risk, low reward. "Put a bit more powerful GPU and we got the graphic whores in our pocket." Well they're wrong. Because I have traditionally been one of those guys, and this time it's just not enough. Truth is this core tech sucks whether or not they have a an advantage! The Xbox One's core tech sucks, and the PS4's core tech sucks. And any PC gamer will tell you the same. It's not like the PS4 will be capable of real time ray-tracing engines and the X1 won't, or running some crazy ass new physics model that actually offers a significant difference and the X1 won't. No. Nothing like that. It takes 2 Titan GPUs to do a real time ray tracing engine at 25fps and still has noise. If it was something like that, sure, I'd be excited. But no...it's not going to be anything along those lines. And at least MS is saying..."it sucks but well we'll make up for it because we'll hook it up to a server and we'll be able to target other areas other than textures which have traditionally been overlooked. A.I., physics, etc."

So what else does Sony have? MS is promising all this other stuff. Sony..."sorry....here's $100 off!" In a nutshell. That's the proposition.

Well to those of us that stopped seeing value in the same old games, I'm not going to buy it at $500, $400, $300, or even $200. It's just not appealing at all at any price point.

According to the Game Informer exclusive coverage they plan on using it for both A.I. and physics. They didn't elaborate on it, but dedicated servers usually means online multiplayer hosting. Not physics processing, not lighting, not rendering, not cloth or fluid dynamics, none of that. All of those things have been specifically mentioned by MS and according to GI Titanfall is using it for both A.I. and physics.

Yes, actually. And that's if it's an offline game in the first place. They can easily make it a requirement, like Titanfall and yes Titanfall is already confirmed to be using real time processing for A.I.

And it only sounds like a negative because you and a whole bunch of others are hell bent on making positive things sound like negative.

You see, the way I see it, and the way it actually works, is a game that typically maxes out the power of the console, gets more power from connecting to the server. Not the other way around. There is no negative in this. A game with online multiplayer, doesn't take away processing power from the offline single player campaign.

On everything? They dropped the DRM requirement due to massive backlash. What else did the backpedal on?

I also don't care how MS structures their company(they're huge) and it means nothing to me but why is re-structuring a massive company into separate divisions a bad thing? About a year ago, shareholders actually wanted to break them up, so this is MS's answer to sticking together while still pleasing those guys. What's that got to do with anything though? Politics, business, has little effect on my entertainment experience in my living room. Why even bring up financial stability here because it doesn't serve your point at all? You want to talk about layoffs, auctioning buildings to scrape a few billion, constant losses, and that kind of stuff? If you're looking on the business end for comfort in your purchase, you won't find it in Sony's financial spreadsheets.

And just cause they dropped it, it should be pretty obvious, they don't plan on dropping their plans. They're just going to allow people who don't know any better without internet to buy their console and figure out it's nowhere near as good if they don't plan on getting online. They tried to make it a requirement, to make it clear. But MS didn't do a 180 to match what Sony is doing. Sony isn't doing anything new. Not doing anything new, isn't considered doing something. MS was already doing this with the 360...so what are you talking about?

Sony's proposition is the same as what the 360/PS4 was last generation, more like the 360 actually, because even from a hardware design perspective, they finally dropped proprietary hardware to do what MS has been doing since the original Xbox. In fact Sony just added a paywall similar to Xbox Live Arcade, some 10 years later when they could finally build it up enough to justify charging for it. Sony dropped the Move bundle, to try and undercut MS, which could be their biggest issue if it turns out Kinect gets heavily integrated into next-gen games, and has 2-3 megahits early on that sell millions of titles and appeal to all gamers. It would get solidified as a permanent gaming device like the analog stick, or online gaming, or a hard drive. So who doesn't have focus? Does Sony not believe enough in their tech to charge for it and make it standard? We all know what happens to accessories so the message from Sony is pretty loud and clear, that they gave up on this battle(a 2nd time) before it even started. And that's where they messed up with me. They don't have a good enough answer for Kinect and so they're willing to sell their console cheaper.

And personally I don't give a crap what I have on my dash. Those are miniscule, inconsequential reasons or annoyances(one way or the other) when it comes to consoles that I don't really take into consideration when making my purchase. For one or the other.

But if you ask me, consoles should have been doing more than just games for the past decade in the first place. Why do I need a stripped down PC, which is what they both are, that are capable of so much more limited to JUST gaming? Having a system capable of doing more than just games never held the PC or PC gaming back and some of the biggest games today on consoles are games that were originally PC games by PC developers. Consoles grew up and it's about time they did.

It doesn't bother me one bit to have a device that does more because it's clearly matching everything a gaming console does as well and then some. The ability of Windows to do everything else, is not holding back PC gaming or diluting the experience. And in the case of Xbox One, it also does all this with some pretty cool voice recognition, that makes it look futuristic and I think the public will eat it up. The tech head in me is salivating.

But as far as gaming, if anything the Xbox One, because of Kinect, because of cloud gaming, as far as a gaming machine, is a more inclusive machine than the PS4, who pretty much cuts out 100+ million casual gamers as well as any core gamers that actually like and want experimental tech. And the launch line-up immediately represents this broader focus. The variety across the Xbox One's line-up will appeal to a lot more people than the PS4's and i think that's going to continue to be the case going forward.

And finally, I won't tell you how to spend your money either but I will say this. Microsoft positioned the Xbox one to be the de facto next-generation console and entertainment device while Sony's positioned the PS4 to be a next-gen traditional console that appeals mainly to core gamers. The bad part for them is MS is also catering to those guys just as much

That's why I'm buying an Xbox One and I feel very confident in that purchase and I'm really excited about it. For me, it just has a lot more attainable potential and anyone who actually wants to look at this honestly, should be able to see it. A slight GPU advantage is no way in hell going to ever overcome all the tech advantage in the Xbox One to the average consumer or to a gamer. Not even close. It doesn't have the potential of cloud gaming and kinect integration into core games and they also have nothing exciting to offer as an alternative to that, other than price. That's the big gap. I know exactly or have a very good idea of what I'm going to get from that GPU advantage of the PS4 on modest hardware. At most, minimal graphical tweaks in multiplatform titles that won't have a drastic impact on gaming. I have no idea what Kinect + cloud + next gen gaming will give me. And that's what it makes it exciting. The biggest tool in Sony's pocket is price. Other than that, I honestly believe they're in a big hole in terms of technology to start this generation. Sony's in great position to fight a battle in the fall of 2013. They have no 10 year plan this time around though. It's weak as hell if all they are banking on is a slight GPU advantage which could quickly be forgotten if the moment comes and MS starts demonstrating real time cloud processing at next E3 and heavy kinect integration into core games. Right now Cerny's downplaying cloud processing just as hard as Sony was downplaying online gaming when MS was trying to introduce Xbox Live. Because, unlike a GPU advantage, if those things pan out for MS, then those things will have a big impact on gaming, just like Xbox Live did. And just like Xbox Live, it will be the default console to get if you want next-gen gaming. And yes, at that point, I do believe Sony will get more aggressive and have no choice but to copy what they're doing if they want to remain competitive. Like they have been doing for a decade.