I am not playing the innocent, I already told you where the problem is. By continuing this discussion, which is and was completely only between us, although you said I was baiting, it gets off-topic and as you seem to be the only one who "took the bait", well. I don't want to repeat myself, it has already been said. If you want to argue about why GPGPU is only PS4-related, feel free to make a thread about it and tell people that GPGPU is not only available on PS4 and is a last-gen tech :)

The thing that nobody took your bait is that nobody really cares about the topic of the thread in the first place, or maybe people are just smarter than you think they are. Just like i thought you are smarter than you pretend to be. But if you insist i will revert my opinion and i will percieve you as the character you choose for yourself.

I did and your saying it can be done without a server farm. If this is the case why spend millions to do that instead of doing in through the hardware? Also what's your proof that this level of destruction and playable debris can be done on hardware? 

Azure isn't for free either. Phil Spencer sure must pay for each Azure's TFLOP and TB of bandwidth used. Having it in house is cheaper, and XBL may have few free coupons to use Azure in order to push the XB1, but any developer can rent computing resources from other Cloud providers (like Amazon). And that is less of an issue for the big guys (EA, Ubisoft... Sony). If they don't have their Cloud computing technology already.

In any case any deferred computation can be (with some restrictions) implemented as pre-baked. To each building could be associated a DB with one or more explosion simulations. It would require quite a large amount of disc data but the final effect would be similar. Maybe a tad repetitive in few cases if there is a space constraint. Still it would have the benefit to be offline and immediate (no noticeable delay).

So there isn't really anything "miraculous" about this remote computing technology. Which btw is 30 years old. The Uncharted 2 cutscenes have been developed using the same identical technology, but on farms of PS3 connected via Ethernet. Indeed the weak link (literally) on Cloud computing for video games is the Internet. Too bleeding slow. Especially the latency.

Yeah it was really possible

When we see offline games using physics at the same level as Crackdown 3 I guess you'll be proved right.

Until then give it a rest buddy.

Destructible environments do look even better this gen. You should check out Crackdown 3. Also, while watching Crackdown 3, open another tab and read up on it, the game is not always online. You can play the game entirely offline.

Now, complaining and starting up conspiracy theories about why online is required for... online components, is a whole nother issue. I'm wondering, does it also bother you that online leagues in sports games requires online? Driveclub's online club mechanics, you have to be online for those. Is that an issue? Star Wars Battlefront is a huge holiday 2015 game. I think you have to be online to play its online modes.

Now, since you're speaking factually about how better destruction can be this gen, where did you see this at? More specs doesn't automatically mean better destruction. The GeoMod engine was amazing and Voalition spent over a decade building and fine tuning it. You don't get better looking destruction just by having more specs. BF3 and BF4 have better specs but don't have better destruction.

1) Nope, gamers pay for the maintenance off those servers and the xbox division have their own server which are the so no they are not paying for every tflops which is not even the buisiness model Microsoft is using for their server anyway.

2)Then it will not be dynamic anymore and the console would still have the issue on processing collider for remaining debris.

3) I have no reason to think the delay will be anymore significant than any other multiplayer game like COD or BF as they will certainly use forward prediction like for any of those game. Yes their will be more data but if your connection is good enough (and we are talking of 4mbps) then this will not result in lag. ping /= bandwith

4) Reread my post, I never said that it's new and that you can't achieve the same with dedicated server but it's not financially impossible. look at Destiny the game does not make significantly more processing online than a game like cod yet for a 10 year support they expect multiple hundreds of millions in server cost. The buisiness model Microsoft is using coupled with a server virtualization technology (which is relatively new) are what made this financially possible. 

It can be done on hardware.
The 2013 NVidia demo looks just as good as the 2014 Build demo of Crackdown 3 tech

One GTX 680 30fps specialized hardware


Server farm with general computing


The difference is PC games won't support it since it would severly limit the user base to those with high end cards when it changes the gameplay. Hence you only see graphical enhancements for high end cards.

The distributed computing tech can be used for many things, MS does all kinds of research. So applying it to a game as a show case is just a bonus. And this way you don't need a physx chip on the local hardware so everyone can enjoy it and then it makes sense to put it in a game.

It's an easy logical leap. The level detail of destruction on this game is very close to crackdown. Crackdown does this on a larger scale by being open world. Why is it hard to believe that PS4/XB1 that are extraordinarily more powerful in calculations can do what PS3/360 did in the same way but open world? Especially if you add in cell shaded videos that aren't demanding at all?