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Machiavellian on 04 April 2014
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ArnoldRimmer said:

That's great, yet completely meaningless.

There has never been any doubt that graphics rendering calculations can generally be outsourced to other computers. Raytracing clusters have done this for decades.

The problem is, and has always been, that this has very little practical implications for real-world games.

Because even if not considering the problem of network latency/bandwidth etc. of real-world internet connections, there's still the problem that the actual amount of calculations necessary does not decrease, it's just being distributed differently: If, in this setup, a high-end PC managed to show the scene at about 2fps, while "the cloud" managed to achieve 32fps, then that means that the cloud computing resources required for this demo equalled to at least 16 equivalent high-end PCs. These resources cost money, quite a lot of it, that someone has to pay for.

So there's simply a huge rift between theory and practice when it comes to the "power of the cloud" for graphics: Relevant improvements are very well possible in theory - but unrealistic in practice, because no gamer would currently be willing to pay for the resources required to actually do so: Too costly for very limited improvements.

You must remember that there is a difference between profit and cost.  The cost for MS to distribute processing to a certain number of virtual servers compared to the profit margin they get for such resources when selling it as a profit.  The gain for MS is to get as many customers using Azure as possible and getting them tightly integrated with its services.  There will be aspect to this business plan which will require them to give away resources for free to get more subscription subs.

Phil made a tweet that we will be seeing more on this tech as well as the demo is not a throw away piece but could represent something larger that they are doing.  What I am guess we will see is how MS will monetize their platform which may not mean charging customers but instead getting developers, Publishers and other content providers on Azure which would pay for their cloud compute on the customer end.  I am also sure MS is looking to get a good percentage of XBL Gold subs which also goes along the cost of providing the service.

The thing for MS is that they have paid for the servers and infrastructure.  They are not renting, they are the provider so cost of resources can be balanced with cost of usage.  Another thing that is not know is how MS is spreading the work amoung multiple servers. I hope we get more technical detail on the process as I am interested in some of the problems MS must face with delivering this tech.