Unless microsoft is going to charge an expensive subscription then yeah it will under deliver.

Microsoft is gonna have to be forced to buy extra hardware in order for that to happen because the cloud doesn't actually have infinite power. It's power will essentially scale based on the amount of subscribed users. The "cloud" essentially goes to some dumb terminal's where the X1 will offload some processing on it. To top it all off microsoft also has to pay for maintenance costs too as well as electricity bills for the extra hardware being used.

All of this is really expensive and only some users will attempt it to subscribe.

No, no , no, you have it all wrong. Sony would have being better served by not going with bluray.

Hahaha

Well... A Faster DVD probably would have helped in spades in a memory starved situation! :P

Im not denying what you do for a living and how helpful that is to your clients, im just saying MS havent explicitly said how much they have invested in this. Like I said before, it might just be something done on a tiny scale.

Remember their very first video showing natals vision and how it actually turned out? That was because they led people to believe they were working on something far bigger than they actually could deliver.

And when do you think its 'true test' will be? dont you think its unethical to market something which the consumers have no idea when it will be coming?

Sony might as well start marketing titanfall 2 for PS4 because I bet that will come out sooner than MS's cloud will have its 'true test'

However, you can *work* it out to a rough estimate.

The "Xbox Cloud" runs on top of Azure, Microsoft has already made over a Billion dollars from Azure itself via Xbox, Office, Outlook and other business ventures.
Azure itself consists of a Million servers, in a datacenter you have roughly 50,000 - 100,000 servers so you are looking at anywhere from 10-20 data centers positioned all around the world.
Thus by extension... All the Yanks won't be getting the 1 million servers for gaming, they get a fraction of that because it's distributed world-wide, they also get less of that fraction as it's not all dedicated to Xbox.

Now assuming every server costs roughly $1,000 (That's being conservative!) that's $1 Billion spent right there and that's before you actually build the complex (Can cost 10's - 100's of millions), provide dedicated high-speed fibre. (Think: Much faster than 1Gbps bandwidth.), provide relatively complex cooling (I.E. - Water or even something like Helium.) and throw electricity at it.

The average Data centers energy costs is roughly $10 million per megawatt and at 250 megawatts would then cost about 2.5 billion, so it's not a stretch to assume the entire endevour has cost upwards of 4.5 Billion+ and that's before you take into account engineers, network administrators and other staff you need to hire, taxes, research and development... You name it.

Microsoft has invested a massive amount in it's server infrustructure, the only company that competes with it is... Google who probably has a few more.
However, those 1 million servers are not dedicated to Xbox, it's dedicated to whoever has their wallets open, thus if Sony or Nintendo ever wishes to do so... They could use the "Cloud" to perform calculations for their own platforms.

"it's not all dedicated to Xbox"

I know...thats what im trying to tell you.

Adding cloud based AI means they have an additional running cost to the games they used to sell without this technology. I dont think MS want to lose that much money from their pockets which is why I think a considerable amount of cloud power will not be dedicated to xbox.

Lets assume for a moment that the next call of duty will use cloud based AI for XB1, but the PS4 wont have it.

Do you think the increase in sales on the XB1 version because of the cloud will cover the cost of running the cloud for that game for many years? Dont forget to factor in that the better the cloud AI is the more it will cost to run. I personally dont think it will bring in many extra sales, but it will add a running cost to the millions who were going to buy it on XB1 anyway.

So basically, my point is that its not a viable business model which is what leads me to believe its just overhyped marketing for a feature that they wont be spending much on. (again, im not questioning how much they spent on Azure for their business clients)

I think you have confused me for Machiavellian. :P

They advertised the feature very much like Blast Processing/Cell. Think it's just hype with propably some cool features but nothing game changing.

This might not be a big deal if "power of the cloud" wasnt in just about every statement. I guess time will tell like with the cell.

@ Bolded:  Actually this is incorrect.  MS has just spent 1 billion dollars just last year on a new datacenter in virgina which they stated will be used for XBL and their other services.  MS spent a billion on their Orleans platform which will be used for their cloud based processing.  MS has stated they will dedicate 300,00 servers to bring cloud based processing to the X1.  If that is not MS stating their investment to their cloud services, I am not sure exactly what you are looking for.

Not sure what Kinect/Natal has anything to do with Azure and MS cloud based services.  The first Kinect was more hampered by cost to bring to market not development of the device as MS cut a few features in order to sell the device at a mass market price.  Anyway thats neither here or there and revelant to the discussion

I stated that I believe the new Halo will be the game that leverage cloud processing.  Most companies market first then deliver later as they want to get buzz around their product before bringing it to market.  This is done all the time.

Not sure where you have been but Sony is a prime company that market something which could take years before it make it to market.