scottie said:
Ok, from the sounds of that post, you don't really know what cloud processing is. Internet speeds don't need to progress at the same rate as processing speeds, because the amount of processing required in video games increases orders of magnitude faster than the amount of data a streaming service needs to send.
The advantage of cloud processing is that you do the work remotely, and then just pass the results to the console. The size of the results needed to be sent will either be constant, or slightly increasing.
Take as an example, if we wanted a complete cloud system, much like Ouya, where all the processing is done elsewhere and what is sent back is just a video.
If we had done this in 1985 to replace the NES, we would have had to send 256*240 pixels, and must change 30 times per second. This means we need to send 1.8 M pixels per second. The NES uses 2 digit hexidecimal for colours, so the total amount of data sent is 1.8M * 8, as a hexidecimal digit is 4 bits. The NES would require 14.4 Mbit/s I can't find details for the Famicom modem, but a 3rd party alternative worked at 2.4 kbit/second. Internet speeds would need to be 7000 times faster to display it this way. Nowadays, for the X1, we can get at best 3840*2160 pixels at 60 fps, which is 500 M pixels/second. Each pixel requires 24 bits, requiring 1.2 GBit/s. This is actually attainable for the X1 in locations with Google fibre. We can also drop the framerate to 30/second and resolution down from 4k to 1080p to massively reduce the load. I am not suggesting that this will be how the X1 streaming works, just demonstrating that the internet is developing faster than the load required to stream.
We can think of partial streaming solutions that the amount of data sent has not even increased since computers were invented. Lets say we had a chess game. The graphics and the users turn are handled by the Xbone, and the A.I. is handled in the cloud. This allows for use of super computers, creating an A.I. good enough to beat grand masters. What is the actual data sent? The location of the piece to be moved, and the location is is to move to. All that needs to be sent is A7A6 to move a pawn forward. This is the same amount of data that would have been sent with a chess cloud streamign service in 1950, and it'll be the same in 2050. |
I believe I understand what cloud processing is fairly well. You are correct that compressing a signal can reduce bandwith requirements. That doesn't change the fact that bandwidth usage costs a lot more money than silicon. Even if your data is proccessed in the cloud, it still has to be processed, you the customer still have to pay for renting that proccessing power, but you, as well as your provider(Microsoft) also have to pay for the increased bandwidth usage. It is a lot more cost effective for the consumer, to make a one time purchase and use local hardware.
And btw, last time I checked Google Fibre isn't widely available. Most of the developed world is probably still in the 10-50 Mbps range. Could you stream 1080p with 50 Mbps? Yes you could. But it would cost a hell of a lot less if you just spent 100 dollars more on your graphics card. There is a reason why so many ISPs have caps on bandwidth usage.
