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Forums - Microsoft - Microsoft to invest $700 million in new data centre to support cloud service & Xbox Live

SvennoJ on 24 June 2013

So how many data centers do they have? Can I find out somewhere what the closest one is to where I live?
I doubt my ping time to Des Moines is all that good.



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the2real4mafol on 24 June 2013

How about buy some small/ indie game studios instead? Remedy could be a good purchase



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Darth Tigris on 24 June 2013
Scoobes said:
Darth Tigris said:
This is why the "Sony has the cloud too" comments are so misinformed. This is a HUGE investment and you don't here anything like this from Sony.

The cloud IS an advantage for the X1. Reports like this make that clear.

This data centre is almost certainly going to be used for a lot more than gaming though. This is a big part of Microsoft's business and gaming is only one aspect of it.

If Sony wanted to they could setup their own dedicated gaming servers (which they are probably doing for Gaikai) or simply use existing infrastructure from other companies (e.g. Amazon, Google, or possibly even Microsoft themselves... which would be ironic for Sony fans) for cloud services. Microsoft may have the infrastructure in place but it wouldn't be difficult for Sony or specific publishers to implement these services themselves. The result on the end-user wouldn't be significantly different.

But it would take a significant financial investment, and there is nothing 'simple' about that for any company.  And you're right, this is likely for Azure as a whole, but it shows what type of investment that MS is making in it's OWN cloud business and that is something Sony is just not doing right now.  Considering their financial situation as well, it's unlikely they would be able to do it.

Though many are trying to minimize it, the cloud is not some make believe thing that will bring no advantage.  And it is not something that Sony can match 'simply'.



J_Allard on 24 June 2013
DirtyP2002 said:

I am waiting for this Braid dev. calling this one fake.
He must know best, he made a $10 XBLA game!


LOL good lord this guy became a huge douche recently didn't he.



yo_john117 on 24 June 2013

Hey that's pretty close to where I live. 700 million is a lot of money for Iowa though



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sales2099 on 25 June 2013
ironmanDX said:
sales2099 said:
Sounds good to me. And looks like MS's cloud tech will be much better then the competition.


Not for long!!

gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=163390

key word was "should" buy. And sicne they allready bought gaikai, I think Sony will stay behind in the cloud department for years.



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J_Allard on 25 June 2013

When Eurogamer did their Gaikai vs OnLive comparison, OnLive was brutal ping wise but Gaikai was still terrible, approaching 200ms of latency. Sony has shown me no reason whatsoever to put faith in their ability to engineer quality online software to make their online network high quality. MS on the other hand has.



Scoobes on 25 June 2013
Darth Tigris said:
Scoobes said:

This data centre is almost certainly going to be used for a lot more than gaming though. This is a big part of Microsoft's business and gaming is only one aspect of it.

If Sony wanted to they could setup their own dedicated gaming servers (which they are probably doing for Gaikai) or simply use existing infrastructure from other companies (e.g. Amazon, Google, or possibly even Microsoft themselves... which would be ironic for Sony fans) for cloud services. Microsoft may have the infrastructure in place but it wouldn't be difficult for Sony or specific publishers to implement these services themselves. The result on the end-user wouldn't be significantly different.

But it would take a significant financial investment, and there is nothing 'simple' about that for any company.  And you're right, this is likely for Azure as a whole, but it shows what type of investment that MS is making in it's OWN cloud business and that is something Sony is just not doing right now.  Considering their financial situation as well, it's unlikely they would be able to do it.

Though many are trying to minimize it, the cloud is not some make believe thing that will bring no advantage.  And it is not something that Sony can match 'simply'.

It may take significant financial investment but if it's worth it, companies will invest. The technology has already been around for a while and there's nothing particularly new about that aspect. Publishers have already setup similar technology for MMOs, as well as games like Diablo 3 and Sim City. The benefit will be primarily for publishers in that they can utilise MS' existing infrastructure. End users will only see minor benefits and if a game would benefit from online processing, companies will invest for rival platforms (PS4 and PC).

Sony have already shown they're willing to invest in dedicated servers for first-party multiplayer games on PS3. They're already investing in server farms for Gaikai services which have to be powerful enough to run entire games. It's not that big of a stretch to see them investing futher in this area.

Where Microsoft have an advantage is that they:

1. Have a fully developed and mature infrastructure in place already

2. Their studios are actively pushing this to see what they can do. Even though the tech has existed and is usable on PC, not many devs have had bright ideas about how to use their servers for anything more than hosting and MMO related stuff. Forza looks especially intriguing with the AI thing.




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