Why are people talking about visuals? It's a cell shaded game. Always has been. Visuals weren't ever ultra real. Talk about nitpicking. There's a single player mode for those concerned about just multiplayer. It's also funny to me how we're back to ppl showing fake concern about a whole other countries Internet service. Like you really give a shit what's happening across the world Internet related

I read they are trying to optimize for 2-4mbps. Don't know if that's true or not

Ok, so just because some of us think that the demo looks pretty mediocre/bad, it is called derailing and baiting. Or just because we are sceptical that MS actually invests time and energy into a "new tech" that they will only use in  one of their mediocre franchises, we are trolling now? Sorry for disagreeing.

My opinion on the issue is (like it or not) that they are mnaking a huge fuss, about a "new" technology ( see the overdone Cloud hype) that will be used in best case in a handfull of games, before it will be forgotten. This is just like MAG and it's 256 player battles. They would rather invest that money in an Avalanche made, proper Crackdown.

It's certainly relevant for some great Anandtech article, it's irrelevant for end users, since they see it as black box - I'm certainly interested in knowing more about the tech, but what matters for most end users is if there are problems on their end, and that's where internet connections kick in.

Ehh, sure, why not.

sorry but i dont see the power of the cloud. this looks like an xbox 360 game

Wow a few people saying it looks like a 360 game. Where can I buy this super 360? Crackdown nor Crackdown 2 looked anywhere near this good.

Thanks. I've been thinking about it some more (would be an awesome project to work on) and you can smooth out the spikes considerably with forward prediction. You don't have to wait until the rocket hits the building or for one building to hit the other building, the server can predict what's going to happen as long as the player doesn't interfere. That way it can spoon feed the new data beforehand. The tricky part is all the revision (or patches) you need to do when a player does interfere with already computed data which can cascade on.

For example if building A is going to hit building B or building C explodes on rocket impact it might generate a big spike of data to be send within just a few frames. To recieve all that in just 3 frames you might need internet capable of 40 mbps, even though you only need it for 0.1 sec. Since ther server can already predict what's going to happen as soon as you press fire, same with predicting where a building is going when it starts to collapse. The server can start to transmit future data with that 2-4 mbps limit several seconds before the actual impact happens. Basically buffering future data, same way streaming movies keeps running smooth.  (4 mbps is only 17 kilobyte per frame after all)

The hard part is multiple players interfering, and what happens when everyone starts firing rockets into everything at once without any pauses to catch up. A big smoke screen could solve that :)

I also wonder how much overhead this generates by using general distributed computing. It wouldn't surprise me if a single modern physx chip can easily do the same. The difference is that those are now only used to add tons of particles, more realistic water or hair, pure visual enhancements. Nobody wants to make it a requirement so it can't effect gameplay in any way. By sticking it in the cloud, the same experience is available to everyone.

Anyway by what the new demo shows it wouldn't surprise me the least if a high end pc can easily breeze through that without the cloud. The impressive part is that it works with general distributed computing, which means it can run on a virtualized server on any hardware. Of course that's a lot more impressive as a programmer, a gamer doesn't care where it comes from. Well maybe some do judging by the comments.

So I'll take a stab at that flame bait article :) Did MAG turn the ps3 into the most powerful console ever? 256 players together all firing projectiles, never seen before, imagine the possibilities. Yeah, that went far. People complained it looked basic, and that it did for good reason, all those players need to be rendered. Same way all the destruction in Crackdown 3 will still need to be rendered.

Next time read my whole post before replying please.

No need to be rude about it.

Your second paragraph would clearly have been just fine on its own.

Neat in-game physics are awesome. But how does that make XBONE the most powerful console ever....when PS4's stats are already clearly more powerful? Just asking.

I'm sure some PS4 game will come along with super good game world physics also. Hell, for that matter I'm sure even Wii U might (I'm looking at you, Zelda).