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Machiavellian on 04 April 2014
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Terlig said:
Machiavellian said:

From my understanding Gaikia does not leverage spreading a game over multiple servers, instead, Gaikai spins up an instance of that game for each user that is playing the game.  What Gaikai could do is take the rendered output from the game and spread that out to multiple servers for processing which is pretty easy with video output.  The difference with MS solution and Gaikai is that MS solution does not need an instance of the game running for each user.  Instead one main hosted instance can be used to support multiple users as the hosted instance just neeeds to sync the streams and send the data off to be process by mutliple servers.

Another advantage of MS solution is that its not dependant on the hardware.  For Gaikai to work, the game is actually rendered on PS3 hardware.  I am sure for PS4 games, those games might need PS4 hardware as well.  MS solution can use any combination of hardware and software making the cost lower to support.

We don't know how gaikai exactly works (i mean tech PoV, like load balancing). Besides, games don't need to run PS3 hardware. If development mashines were PCs, then i see no problem to run it on regular servers.

You also seem to forget about one very important thing - purpose. Gaikai aims to deliver sort of emulation for older games. This is only an addition, charged service for those who want to play some good, older games. And the whole thing behind this MS cloud thing is to deliver performance on the pair with PS4 for all modern games. And still, Sony has shown working Gaikai games, and more or less release date (in few months!), while MS shown nothing but simple, labolatory demo of something we might not see in this decade.

Actually we do know how Gaikai works.  I read an article awhile ago on the setup.  I do not expect it to change for PS3 backward compatibility.  For PS4 games there would be a need to run the Hardware because Sony did provide custom setup for the GPU/ CPU and instruction set.  

As for MS plans with their cloud compute, I believe you are narrowing their focus.  Its not about making X1 games compable with the PS4, the scope is way bigger than that.  MS want people to use their cloud service and sign up for a subscription service.  For the X1 its XBL GOLD.  Wether is cusotmers, developers or publishers.  MS want them using Azure and become dependant on its services.

Gaikai and even online has been on the market and have not set the world on fire, why people believe that Playstation now will do the same when the same issues that have held back Onlive and Gaikai still exist.  Its good tech but until it goes from beta to live, speculation how good the service will be is no better than speculation on how good cloudl compute will be.  Also believe this will take years or decade to bring to market really seem like people have a very limited view of the tech.  I do not see this happening this year but I would definitely say next year you will see more developres use the cloud compute because MS has already built the infrastructure.