JayWood2010 said: ArnoldRimmer said: bananaking21 said: can their be a tl:dr version? Sure! At it's very core, "the cloud" is just a new marketing buzzword for saying "dedicated servers". Microsoft's Azure cloud pretty much just makes the process of providing dedicated servers easier for the publisher; for the gamer/end customer, there is no real advantage/difference, which is why there is so much confusion, because the actual gamers do not observe any difference. So, It's a bit like Raider now being called Twix. I wouldnt go that far, there is advantages to using cloud based servers as Respawn mentioned.  And what makes things easier for the devs makes things better for the gamers.  You should be happy for the devs that they have an easier process to go through, and hopefully it will fix a lot of the day one issues we saw last gen.  Though that is to be determined at this moment.

Sure, that's a valid and more positive way to present it.

What I'm trying to say is that from the gamer's point of view, there is no clear, direct advantage/difference between the current "cloud" and the previous "dedicated servers". There's nothing that's suddenly technically possible that just couldn't have been done with dedicated servers before. If the gamers get any positive effects from using the cloud, it will be indirect effects.

As we both seem to agree, the real advantage is for the publishers. So in a way, maybe it could be compared to something like the game development studios being given a new C++-compiler that requires 20% less time to compile. This might have indirect positive effects for the gamers, as the game developers might then have more time for improving/bug fixing their games. But it would still be rather strange to see the actual gamers being enthusiastic about that new C++-compiler, as they wouldn't clearly see how it benefits them. Except, of course, if they claimed some bullshit like using this new C++-compiler would make the games "50 times better"...

o I'm still convinced that the whole "the power of the cloud!!!"-talk it was mainly clever marketing. If it was different, we'd still be hearing much more about how great the cloud is.

So counterstrike was using the cloud 18 years ago?

This is good for the Xbox crowd. Perhaps the biggest shift to next gen for them.

Having been a 360 user past gen, it was frustrating beyond belief to play player hosted MP games like COD and Halo. Earlier in the gen, the host quitting would literally end the game (COD4) and later on we had host migration. Even then, the host advantage (or disadvantage with lag comp) was a complete mess and hit detection was all over the place.

Luckily, playing Ghosts on PS4 with dedis has improved the online MP experience greatly and most Sony 1st part MP games have been on dedis for quite a while now even on PS3. Hopefully this will continue forward even more.

Yeah I read that statement as 'Microsoft bankrolled our servers which is a better business decision for us so we gave them exclusivity.'

so it's just like dedicated servers

Yep. Everything I already knew. Great for A.I. development.

Good, as long as EA aren't running the servers then its all good.

obviously respawn saw Ethomaz's thread and decided to copy him and make their own explanation too

The day people will be wowed is the day when a 100% cloud powered, stream only game launches with the most terrific graphics. Whoever does it first is another question.

Basically Microsoft made the Azure servers for Office 365 and Windows stuff and they realised that they could make games better with it

Basically Microsoft have better infrastructure, but Sony are actively investing in this sort of stuff, especially with PlayStation Now