Well it enables processor intensive things that would otherwise be impossible at a playable framerate, especially on other consoles. It's like the Kaio-Ken technique, only real.

Well, if you can play the same games on your TV as you could as a PS3, then it's fair to say your PSNow enabled TV has the same functionality......plus obviously, the Xbox 360 is more powerful than the PS3 so that's a faulty analogy.

There are no game specific servers for Azure. They spin up on demand.

Realistically the only time we might expect these servers to be unavailable is the collapse of Microsoft or if we replace Circuit built servers with some kind of alien organic server that wasn't backwards compatible. But that's a ways off.

This is a specific example of it making a game look better, fully realised destruction makes the game look more impressive then not having it. That's all there is to it.

If you're judging based on resolution/fidelity - it's open for debate as if the CPU was the bottleneck to improving those things will change upon the game.  This demo is an example of increasing framerate (30fps instead of less than 1fps),  increasing the number of unique objects in a world and keeping it all persistant with unlimited serverside memory, all of those are tangibly a greater difference than upscaled 900p- vs.1080p....and if CrackDown 3 is 1080p..., what else ya got?

If fully realised this level of interactive destruction is one of the most interesting moments of this generation, which has at times been quite underwhelming.
I look forward to seeing it!

Ignoring the fact of the cloud for a moment. If this were a multiplatform game and the XBO version with the power of the cloud ran as shown and the PS4 version ran at either less than 1 frame per second or with greatly reduced destruction (less than 5%) and the debris disappeared shortly after, what conclusion would you derive?

Ignoring the fact of the cloud, then using the cloud to prove a point, erm what?
If it was a multiplatform game, both would use the cloud...

Some other things:

The cloud has nothing to do with debris staying or not. That's all in local memory, rendered locally, a choice by the developers to keep the debris as the rest of the graphics will have to be toned down already to compensate for the many pieces falling at once scenarios. (Btw in the demos not all debris stays, the pile of rubble is quite small compared to the buildings)

There are other ways to optimize total destruction. Red Faction Armageddon managed fine on 360, the Geomod engine should do fine scaled up to this gen. Yet it's not used since it limits the graphic fidelity compared to other games, hence a cell shaded game is getting this tech. What would be a problem is online multiplayer when every client has to synchronize all the destruction with the other clients. Dedicated servers are a better solution when a lot of moving parts are involved. Plus the server has the luxury to calculate ahead and spoon feed the clients within a set bandwidth limit. As soon as you fire a rocket, the outcome can already be calculated.

Anyway we don't know much about the single player atm. How much destruction it will allow, or if the graphics will be enhanced compared to competive multiplayer. Nor how well it will work through an average internet connection through a shared wifi router.

No they wouldn't, it just suits the comparison better. If this were a MP game that ran at 900p on XBone and 1080p on PS4 it would be used as evidence that the latter were more powerful. So if CD leveraged the cloud on XB1 and not the on the PS4 it would be same proof as otherwise.

Of course we could compare it to Infamous Second Son and the difference in destruction is the same, but then i'd get some bullshit about "Second Son wasn't built for destruction so doesn't need it" to prove a point, but that sucks.

Crackdown 3’s multiplayer is all about unscripted, real-time destruction on an unseen scale. 2009’s Red Faction: Guerrilla gave us a glimpse of this level of destruction but few developers since have followed suit. The problem, explains Jones, is that destruction on this grand level is a big drain on physics and requires a large amount of processing power and memory. More than a single box can realistically provide. Reagent’s solution to this problem is to leverage the Xbox One’s cloud computing capabilities to provide the horsepower necessary to facilitate a 100 per cent destructible environment...Impressively, none of the debris disappears either. The evidence of your destruction persists for as long as the game lasts.

Crackdown 3 is cel shaded, because crackdown is cel shaded. It always has been. Even for CGI trailers its celshaded. That has little to do with it.

Assuming this is dealt with by the most powerful CPU this console generation has to offer, at best we can hope for is 1/14th of the destruction of crackdown.

These "problems" are the same today. If I blow up a tank in a 32 player game of battlefield, that info still needs to be synched...as does every bullet fired etc.

If there's an online caveat, then potentially the same. Even for game design, they could always unlock it upon the games completion.

Everything else is the same as any other games online performance.

Talk about grasping.

I love the tech behind it, but not the nonsense marketing. Nor am I that excited about total destruction. The heavy focus on that is what killed Red Faction in the end. Evolving worlds would be cool though, landscapes that actually change over time as you play. That's a lot more data than some pieces falling, but it's a start.

It feels like the tech was researched, then Crackdown 3 was picked to showcase it. Rather than Crackdown 3 needing total (realistic) destruction to enhance the gameplay. It looks fun to play with anyway. I wish it would have single player online total destruction. Then I can play around with it like universe sandbox. With a create mode to make epic building domino sets :) Competitive multiplayer is not my thing.

I mentioned the details because saying something is just like running dedicated servers is WRONG.  The application, concept, technology, scale and capabilty is not even in the same ball park.  What can be done on the Could platform compared to just a dedicated server is being shown and the ability is far beyound what a single dedicated server could ever acomplish.  So saying its irrelevant to end user is false.  An end user can see and experience the difference.

When people start saying they are tired of MS and their cloud but do not understand why its called Cloud tech, means that those people probably should not talk about subjects they do not have a firm understanding of because then they just look foolish.  This thread is about MS cluod being used within a game to accomplish something we have not seen in any game up to this date.  If a person does not know why understanding the tech is not relevant then they probably shoudl move along.

No, this thread is about "Crackdown 3 turning Xbox One into most powerfull console ever!" - which is Misterxmedia level of bollocks.

And, as I said already, all that end user can see is black box and internet connection - to use your Civic vs Veyron analogy, for users waiting for their physics package to arrive at their destination, the thing that is most important at this moment is the road and traffic jam those cars have to deal with - and both of those are in pretty bad condition for Veyron to actually show that it's Veyron at all.