By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Michelasso on 09 August 2015
Edit Thread
Azzanation said:
Michelasso said:
PS Now is different than the Cloud computing used in Crackdown. In PS Now if one pauses the game the PS3 virtual machine stays allocated to the user, while in Crackdown the Cloud gets used only when needed (like when an explosion needs to be computed).

So it's a matter of statistics. In PS Now a bit more than the theoretical power of a PS3 (let's say 350-400GFLOPS) is reserved 100% of times, even if idle. In Crackdown the servers run the simulations only when requested and thus for each user the Cloud gets used only in a small percentage of the user's gameplay time.

Still there is no doubt that even if it's owned by MS it has a significant cost. MS doesn't get the servers for free. Every server in Azure used by XBL is a server less available to commercial customers. The bandwidth instead could be negligible, sure much less than the one used by PS Now (again, for each user).

Oh, PlayStation Vue is yet again another thing. It's more like Netflix. Lot of bandwidth, little CPU time.

Thats why the XBox brand has 300,000 dedicated servers just for gaming. From that i am guessing those 300,000 servers can be used for whatever Xbox need them for. I believe if they want to go over that qauntity then MS will have to charge it out to Xbox.

All inner company buisness, which is a good thing because theres no out sourcing.


Are you one of those guys believing everything MS says? From an economical point of view that 300K servers statement makes no sense. If during most time let's say only 100K servers are needed the remaing 200K are better being released to Azure. On the other hand at the launch of a game with an intensive use of the Cloud, like it could be Crackdown where everybody on the first day will go frenzy shooting buildings, more than 300K servers could be needed. And those will be stolen from the servers available to commercial customers. In a company I was working for during the peak time of the year (tax returns) they had to double to computing capacity. That was achieved physically renting more RAM and CPUs (yes, they were added to the servers). Thus Phil Spencer before launching a similar game is better planning with Azure which is the best time for not overloading the servers. The ideal is obviously having a constant use of the resources.

Also 300K servers means little. If those servers are Windows (because Azure runs Linux as well) they are weak. A single multiprocessor large Unix server can count for many Windows servers. And if those servers are virtual machines like the ones they rent to customers they are even weaker. Indeed MS love to play with those words. 300K servers, 20x the power of the Xbone. 20x of what? 20x CPU for a total of 2TFLOPS or 20x GPU, counting up to 26TFLOPS? Same for their servers. They should specify the raw power of the average server in the pool available to XBL.

Also be sure that Azure charges XBL. In internal "phoney money" and maybe with few free coupons, but it's a standard accounting procedure to put the internal transactions into budgets.