While I don't agree with your sarcastic and pretentious tone, you are right.

The tech for Crackdown is different and leagues above Red Faction. The computing power needed to run the scale of damage is huge.

The tech is there and runs pretty smooth in controlled conditions. What I want to see is how it'll run in our homes. Will MS be prepared to use large amounts of server space for one play session? Even a couple of thousand players would wipe out a vast amount of servers. It just seems a lot of maintenance and hardware to run a $60 non subscription game.

These discussions are always enjoyable for me.  You always have some people who try to minamize what something like this means, as well as people who try to overstate what it means.  Then, as above, you have people who massively try to overstate what it means.

Now, on topic.

I thought the video from Crackdown 3 was impressive.  Being able to destroy anything is an interesting dynamic.

Of course, that being said, too much shouldn't be made of this.  It's not as if "the power of the cloud" can be used for everything.  The uses are relatively limited when it comes to what it can add to most titles.  Most games should not have this level of destruction, for example.  It's unrealistic and unnecessary.  Unrestrained Multi-player built around environmental destruction?  Sure, sounds fun.  Focused multi-player built around tactics and skill?  Mnn, not unless it can be modified heavily.  Story-driven single player games?  Hell, no.

People shouldn't be caught up with the idea that this is revolutionary.  It's not, at least at this point.  It is pretty cool, though.

So, at the end of the day, this is what we have:

The game looks good. It should be quite enjoyable. Some fans are too excited and other fans feel the need to bring them back "down to earth". It's like " You guys are happy about backwards compatibility but it's been done before--even if OUR console doesn't really offer it, yet. "

Personally, I'm more excited about finally controlling female agents! Yeah, the destruction looks great. Hell. If I remember, Red Faction on the PS2 offered some pretty amazing property destruction. I once tunneled under ground and made my own cave! Crackdown appears to be taking what was done before and evolving it even further. That's just swell. Xbox One gamers have something great to look forward to and that's okay. Later on, PlayStation owners will have something to glow about, too. The cycle will continue. The sun will shine. The earth will spin.

Crackdown will be more impressive because it looks like a big sandbox game but we'll see.

this.

and I'll add this:

The biggest difference is that RF use constructive solid geometry. While this method provide dynamic destruction it does not provide many state of destruction. Object are either broke or not broke and broken objects are not considered physical objects anymore. Only a small portion of the debris remain for visual purpose.

In C3 desctruction are fully dynamics. objects are not considered broke or not broke but objects separates into smaller objects which can be serparated into smaller object etc... every piece are persited and still have collider.

Something like creating a hole in a wall like shown in the C3 demo is something that is not possible in RF except if it has been scripted or by completly destroying the wall segment(object).

Last gen didn't do it on this scale. Watch the red faction video. Howuch debris disappears into the ground? In red faction you are destroying a very small section. On CD3 you can level an entire city while every piece of debris can then be picked up or walked on. 

It is pathetic at this point watching people in this thread with the fail comedy acts and the off topic rants. 

Well i hope no one bring another discussion about another tech that had been done on last gen, this is about cloud tech discussion.

at OP yeah, maybe they had the tech a long time ago but the scale (not just in terms of area, but maybe the amount of calculation each particle ) can only be realize now. But OP is right is not a rocket science and new tech.

Edit
yikes i am late some one already brought that into discussion .

It's a feature that can only be done online because of the type of game crackdown is. What would be the point in having to collect agility orbs if you leveled every building in the city? Not to mention boss's are on the top floor of their respected buildings. I guess we should be able to just level each building and speed run the game. 

Battlefield has 10 timed better graphics and can handle a lot of destruction. You let dice make a cartoony game and I Bet they could easily make a 100 percent destructible map.

The cloud in C3 is not use to bring something new but to scale it up multiple time and add more realism to it.
You could argue that this is possible with dedicated server and you'll be right thechnically but not finnancialy.
Cost to have enough server to do that would be insane and seriously affect the game rentability and will automatically lead to server being close prematurely.
On a cloud platform like azure ressource are affected dynamically based on needs. It can scale up when more player are online and scale down when not, unlike dedicated server, this remove the needs to ever close the server. but even with this it would be hard for dev to add feature like this to a game because cloud computing is costitive and on that scale at his peak it would cost many M$/year.

With the cloud on Xbox platform fees are not assume by publisher but by gamers Xbox live subscription so the cost to add a feature like this to a game is the cost they have to assume when creating it that's where the true power of the cloud is.