in an MMO you lag the fuck out and the game become unplayable.  people will, to a certain extent, forgive an occasion lag-fest because MMOs are required to be online in order to enable the gameplay.  but you need to note that MMOs are not pretty compared to single player experiences.  the online dependance forces the game to be minamalistic in graphics in order to reach the lowest common denominator of a player.

cloud compute in crackdown seems to be there to enhance the visual flare,.. impressive destruction instead of a more simplistic destruction.  will users accept the potential for lag-fests for enhanced visuals?   it's a question i can't answer but i just don't see an online requirement in single player games ever being "acceptable".  i think cloud compute will only be accepted by consumers in online multiplayer games for which the idea of cloud computing (as MS is currently marketing it) is irrelavant. 

It IS a big deal. 

"Yes but the differences is all win."

No! With full game streaming and online gaming the dev makes a single specification for how those things would work. The only factor then is the lag - which is directly dependent on the network conditions.

With this cloud compute, there is a partial set of calculations which are chosen do be done online. The whole problem comes down to this choice. This choice has to be made scalable - i.e. it changes as network conditions change. So now it is a situation where a dev decides (or is forced) to do a certain aspect of their rendering through cloud compute. But what happens if network conditions fail during rendering? Moreover, what happens to the offline player?

What you end up with is SERIOUS fragmentation. How many sets of rendering would there be? What will the offline gamer loose? Can't sacrifice AI or physics for those without cloud compute, or can we?

Headaches for devs. That's what this is. Serious, serious headaches. And for what!?

10% better performance half the time? 20%? 

You don't need to be a tech guru to be able to stare down this rabbit hole. It is ugly. It is very deep and very ugly.

*note, features such as driveatar are not part of this problem whatsoever. Online (and offtime!) calculations are a fantastic idea and I think driveatars are awesome. But this is hardly new.

That's a pretty simplified esimate. The server would first need to know the exact state and position of all objects in your game, then you need a quick burst to get the explosion data back to the console. Averaged over a second 391kbps for 10k chunk paths sounds fine, but you don't want to wait a second for them to all appear. Ofcourse you can pre-empt an explosion as you can start calculating and transmitting data as soon as you press fire on that rocket launcher. No different from having an online shooter handle hit detection server side.
The heaviest part of the physics calculation and data transfer comes when all the stuff starts hitting the ground, shattering, bouncing back / glancing off things breaking up incomming stuff, but I guess you can hide all that in a cloud of dust.

Still the console suddenly needs to light/shadow/z-buffer 10k extra objects. And from the comments of your link http://kotaku.com/the-new-crackdown-will-use-the-cloud-a-lot-1589866608 they're talking about millions of objects. /grain of salt

Cloud compute does not differ on the client end than playing a MMO or Multiplayer type game.  It even would not be all that different from Playstation Now as far as the client end.  In all those cases information is constantly being sent from client to server and back.  All the issues you just raised are the same issues for those types of games including Internet only games like Destiny, the Division, and Titanfall.

You keep saying the word substantially but can you give me a clue of the difference.  I am not seeing it?  Saying something differs but not being able to give a decent example will be hard to convince anyone if you have a grasps of the technology or concepts.

i do not think people are going to care as long as they know there is a requirement for the game.  In other words, people will care if they did not know and purcahse the game only to find out in order to get the best experience they have to be connected.  Are people making this same distinction for games like The Division, Titanfall or Destiny.  People know those games require the internet and they will purchase the game based on their internet conditions.  This would be the same with Crackdown.  There are plenty of games that are going online only that have SP as well as MP.  People seem to be acepting those games now, I see no reason why it will make a difference with Crackdown.

@Bolded:  You are making assumptions on how the tech works without actually knowing how it will be implemented.  The thing about cloud compute is that it was never mentioned if its calculated realtime or not.  Also without knowing how the data is sent from the client to the server and back or what is actually sent make it very hard to base any assumptions unless you are famalier with such work.

 The problem with saying if something will work or not or how it effects a game realy does depend on how the developers and MS tackle the problem.  Your assumption could be going down a path the game is definitely not doing which would make it null.  I believe people should wait until MS give out the details of how their cloud compute is working before jumping to a bunch of assumptions that may or may not play out.

Seems people will believe just about anything...

1) Why do you think it would be any different with game that use cloud computation. If the game required internet dev will specify it just like for Destiny, Diablo 3... 

2) Yes and that is actually not really a factor for cloud computing. So it's a win for cloud computing over streaming.

3) Why should it be scalable??? If devs want the game to be able to play offline than yes but nothing prevent them from making the game online only. 

4) No one is forced to use cloud feature in there games, except maybe some first party, and we are not talking about rendering. the rendering is still all done on the system.

5) What happen to diablo 3 players when they are offline? What will happen to destiny players if they want to be offline?

6) Again, if the dev want to make the game online only there is no problem, if not they will probably just turn off the feature that require cloud computing. If you think that cloud compute is there to make every Xbox One more powerfull you're looking at it the wrong way. It is there to add new features and possibility to games. Forza 5 driveatar is a feature that is turned off when you play offline. If the feature that require cloud computing is required for the game like Titanfall than the game will be online only.

7)That's only your opinion. A want to see sources, give me a link where it say's that capcom, turn 10, respawn use to have more headaches when working on cloud feature.

8)Again you're looking at it the wrong way. it is not to make your Xbox One more powerfull but to offer devs more possibilities.

9)Again this is only your opinion.

Seems some will deny every thing Microsoft do...

perhaps your right, we really don't know.

i personally think consumers group games like titanfall (gameplay that is obviously multiplayer) from games like zelda (gameplay that is single player).  when the gameplay requires an online connection i think consumers will view it differently than when only the gameplay doesn't.  an online connection is restrictive.  for all the reasons that the original debut of the xbone was hated you have to ask questions like: will i be able to play my game if the servers go down?  how long will the servers be maintained?  do i lose my game library if those servers are discontinued?

community based online gameplay i can forgive for being online only,.. online is required to play.  i'm not sure if i'm willing to make the trade for single player games.