CONFIRMED: Free dedicated servers for all XB1 games that want them

Machiavellian

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Machiavellian on 17 October 2013

ArnoldRimmer said:
Sorry to spoil the excitement, but this is apparently just typical PR:
Fooling the audience with well-chosen information that is strictly speaking correct, yet completely misleading.

It probably just means that for a limited time, game developers will not have to pay for setting up dedicated servers alone. It does NOT mean that running these dedicated servers will be free for the developers, no matter how much cloud resources that would use. They could simply charge for things like bandwidth etc., and for the developers it doesn't really matter if they're paying 100k for cloud bandwidth or the same amount for setting up and running their own servers.

So unless we know all the details about Microsoft pricing game developers, there's just not way of saying how good this actually is for developers and customers. I assume that they will indeed try to bait them with relatively small prices though. But they will not charge them absolutely nothing, no matter how much resources they'll use.

It's the same stupid PR as with those ridiculous "Xbox One can/can't do 1080p gaming" statements: Of course the Xbone can do 1080p gaming, even the 360 was already perfectly capable of that. But that's just not what people actually mean when they discuss that question.

I believe before we go into what is PR and what is true we need to understand how Azure works for dedicated servers. First there is no setup of dedicated servers on Azure. All Azure servers are just virtual resources that is managed by the platform. The Servers pretty much run like MS Hyper V virtual machines that are pretty close to the mettle but still not directly tied to physical hardware. Those servers spin up when there is a request and goes away when there are none. There is no physical hardware that is setup to constantily host games. At this time you pay per hour the machie is up and running and the cost can vary but its pretty low. The cheapest model cost about 15 dollars a month to run if it ran 24 hours a day. That should give you a kind of outlook of how cheap it would be to run dedicated servers over Azure. Take the fact that MS is probably willing to eat some cost on this to get developers to use it for the X1 and you see that it probably isn't PR at all.

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ArnoldRimmer on 17 October 2013

Machiavellian said:

I believe before we go into what is PR and what is true we need to understand how Azure works for dedicated servers. First there is no setup of dedicated servers on Azure. All Azure servers are just virtual resources that is managed by the platform. The Servers pretty much run like MS Hyper V virtual machines that are pretty close to the mettle but still not directly tied to physical hardware. Those servers spin up when there is a request and goes away when there are none. There is no physical hardware that is setup to constantily host games. At this time you pay per hour the machie is up and running and the cost can vary but its pretty low. The cheapest model cost about 15 dollars a month to run if it ran 24 hours a day. That should give you a kind of outlook of how cheap it would be to run dedicated servers over Azure. Take the fact that MS is probably willing to eat some cost on this to get developers to use it for the X1 and you see that it probably isn't PR at all.

I think you're missing my point. I know how cloud computing works. But that still doesn't change the fact that his words and the headline give the impression that running dedicated game servers on the MS Azure cloud will be completely free for Xbone game developers. Which is nonsense imo. Microsoft will offer game developers very affordable prices, which I think makes perfect sense, but there will still be costs the developers have to pay, at least in some cases.

Well, they might actually make it completely free and completely cross-finance it with XBL revenues, but I consider that rather unlikely.

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Machiavellian on 17 October 2013

ArnoldRimmer said:

Machiavellian said:

I believe before we go into what is PR and what is true we need to understand how Azure works for dedicated servers. First there is no setup of dedicated servers on Azure. All Azure servers are just virtual resources that is managed by the platform. The Servers pretty much run like MS Hyper V virtual machines that are pretty close to the mettle but still not directly tied to physical hardware. Those servers spin up when there is a request and goes away when there are none. There is no physical hardware that is setup to constantily host games. At this time you pay per hour the machie is up and running and the cost can vary but its pretty low. The cheapest model cost about 15 dollars a month to run if it ran 24 hours a day. That should give you a kind of outlook of how cheap it would be to run dedicated servers over Azure. Take the fact that MS is probably willing to eat some cost on this to get developers to use it for the X1 and you see that it probably isn't PR at all.

I think you're missing my point. I know how cloud computing works. But that still doesn't change the fact that his words and the headline give the impression that running dedicated game servers on the MS Azure cloud will be completely free for Xbone game developers. Which is nonsense imo. Microsoft will offer game developers very affordable prices, which I think makes perfect sense, but there will still be costs the developers have to pay, at least in some cases.

Well, they might actually make it completely free and completely cross-finance it with XBL revenues, but I consider that rather unlikely.

"There should be no confusion on this point. We do not charge developers for Dedicated Servers."

Even I believe there is some cost somewhere but I also believe that MS is making it so cheap that any X1 developer can and will use it. I can see this roled up in the cost of XBL. Each company eat cost in certain areas. Take Sony PS+, we know that they buy out games to release them as rentals for PS+ members. Sony is paying out developers to increase their customer base by giving away games on the service. This type of model is not unusual and this could be exactly what MS is doing. They want to increase XBL and also get consumers hooked on it services. If the X1 becomes the MP game service of choice it will increase subscriptions.