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Hi everyone! I?m Jon Shiring, and I?m an engineer working with the Cloud technology that you?ve heard about for Respawn?s game Titanfall. I have seen a lot of confusion online and I think it?s worth explaining more about what we?re doing on Titanfall and also more generally about Cloud computing and dedicated servers.
 
First, let?s take a step back and dive into the common multiplayer design and talk about why Dedicated Servers are better.

 

 

Read full story:

http://www.respawn.com/news/lets-talk-about-the-xbox-live-cloud/

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It seems with how that article is wrote that Respawn actually gave MS the idea to use Azure as a global server farm for the X1.

 

If so, huge round of applause to those guys. Not only did they gave us the beauty that is MW1, they potentially made a lot of games a lot better in the upcoming generation.

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Wow, a company talking about the cloud without using it as a mere buzzword and/or making dubious claims of its capabilities to solve <insert something it probably can't solve here>. Good and interesting read.  (Y)

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Still makes me laugh how they're going on about dedicated servers as if it's something new, not like PC games have had dedicated servers for over 20 years or anything or that DC games did as well or that GC games did as well or that original xbox games did as well or that PS2 games did as well etc etc etc.

Microsoft cheaped out with multiplayer xbox 360, and charged you for the priviledge of you hosting a game on your xbox, now with the ps4 and xbox 1 they're charging the game developers AND YOU to play online!? It's an utter joke.

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Still makes me laugh how they're going on about dedicated servers as if it's something new, not like PC games have had dedicated servers for over 20 years or anything or that DC games did as well or that GC games did as well or that original xbox games did as well or that PS2 games did as well etc etc etc.

Microsoft cheaped out with multiplayer xbox 360, and charged you for the priviledge of you hosting a game on your xbox, now with the ps4 and xbox 1 they're charging the game developers AND YOU to play online!? It's an utter joke.

You don't understand anything. A game totally using dedicated servers across all matches on a console IS something new. Has the computer ever had a game where all the dedicated servers are hosted free of charge by the developers/publishers? No. 

 

So it is something new.

 

They're on about how the Azure platform lets them bring the advantages of a dedicated server to the console and the pc without ridiculously high costs. To the average joe who's reading that article, they haven't got a clue what dedicated servers even bring.

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Still makes me laugh how they're going on about dedicated servers as if it's something new, not like PC games have had dedicated servers for over 20 years or anything or that DC games did as well or that GC games did as well or that original xbox games did as well or that PS2 games did as well etc etc etc.

Microsoft cheaped out with multiplayer xbox 360, and charged you for the priviledge of you hosting a game on your xbox, now with the ps4 and xbox 1 they're charging the game developers AND YOU to play online!? It's an utter joke.

 

At no point does it come across that dedicated servers are new.  He states very clearly that the reason is cost.  And I'm sorry, but if you don't seem to get why this is an issue, I'm unsure you even read the whole article before commenting.

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Still makes me laugh how they're going on about dedicated servers as if it's something new, not like PC games have had dedicated servers for over 20 years or anything or that DC games did as well or that GC games did as well or that original xbox games did as well or that PS2 games did as well etc etc etc.

Microsoft cheaped out with multiplayer xbox 360, and charged you for the priviledge of you hosting a game on your xbox, now with the ps4 and xbox 1 they're charging the game developers AND YOU to play online!? It's an utter joke.

But the cloud man... Think of the cloud! All that dedicated servers and... Uhh.. Stuff..

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It's funny, people talked about the "cloud" in businesses and people laughed...then it became something businesses wanted/needed. I see the same thing happening in games. It just takes a while for people to make use of it in a way not thought of before.

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Still makes me laugh how they're going on about dedicated servers as if it's something new, not like PC games have had dedicated servers for over 20 years or anything or that DC games did as well or that GC games did as well or that original xbox games did as well or that PS2 games did as well etc etc etc.

Microsoft cheaped out with multiplayer xbox 360, and charged you for the priviledge of you hosting a game on your xbox, now with the ps4 and xbox 1 they're charging the game developers AND YOU to play online!? It's an utter joke.

Your <insert reason here> hatred is clouding your thinking ability.

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Still makes me laugh how they're going on about dedicated servers as if it's something new, not like PC games have had dedicated servers for over 20 years or anything or that DC games did as well or that GC games did as well or that original xbox games did as well or that PS2 games did as well etc etc etc.

Microsoft cheaped out with multiplayer xbox 360, and charged you for the priviledge of you hosting a game on your xbox, now with the ps4 and xbox 1 they're charging the game developers AND YOU to play online!? It's an utter joke.

If you had read the article: "But it?s not just for dedicated servers ? Microsoft thought about our problem in a bigger way...........So it?s not accurate to say that the Xbox Live Cloud is simply a system for running dedicated servers ? it can do a lot more than that."

Therefore if you only think that all it does is offer dedicated servers for hosting matches then you'd be wrong.

In any case, the fact that they're offering dedicated servers to all devs is a real big plus. This means that multiplayer games will all have a consistent ring to it. No wait to switch host, no cheaters, no host migration etc.

I think this is on the same lines that Microsoft did when they introduced Xbox live and standardize the system of match making, score keeping etc....a profile that follows you throughout every game.

Microsoft is doing the same with dedicated servers to all devs to use as they see fit for their games and apps.

Microsoft paving the way once again. While the rest of the industry follows.

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It was clear that the initial way it would be used was for online multiplayer games and offloading all the work from peer-to-peer matches up to the cloud (dedicated server).   I expected this from the start but at the same time that's not all it can be used for.  It sounds like they have more ideas they want to try out using it but can't say yet, I expect BUILD tomorrow or the next day will show us a few demos of it being used from MS themselves to give developers a better idea of the power behind it.

 

Regardless, the way Azure is set up is the key here, compared to just normal dedicated servers in the past that cost way more.   MS doesn't charge you for the server itself, it charges you for the processing time you use.  The more you use the more the cost of course, but since it's all dynamic then a few years from now when fewer people are playing the server costs won't be some high number but will come down as less processing time is needed to run the game.

 

Another thing they did talk about a bit for the game and the use of the cloud now is that they can have scripted events in a MP match, so you get that sorta single player feel to something that's still a multiplayer game exactly because the whole game is up on the server and they can control it fully.  Push out new things to it on the fly and so on. 

 

I do expect to see it used for SP as well, but not for a bit more time.   I'm betting on some first party MS game to use it for SP in some new way first to better show it off actually. 

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I do expect to see it used for SP as well, but not for a bit more time.   I'm betting on some first party MS game to use it for SP in some new way first to better show it off actually. 

 

Forza 5 and Drivatars :)

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You don't understand anything. A game totally using dedicated servers across all matches on a console IS something new. Has the computer ever had a game where all the dedicated servers are hosted free of charge by the developers/publishers? No. 

It's not free for the developer. They pay Microsoft in order to use the cloud servers for their game. Jon Shining even talks about this in the article. The advantage is that the developer no longer has to maintain the servers or worry about load balancing and spinning up/down servers as the game grows/shrinks.

 

It maybe "free" for the gamer, but certainly not totally free.

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You don't understand anything. A game totally using dedicated servers across all matches on a console IS something new. Has the computer ever had a game where all the dedicated servers are hosted free of charge by the developers/publishers? No. 

 

So it is something new.

 

They're on about how the Azure platform lets them bring the advantages of a dedicated server to the console and the pc without ridiculously high costs. To the average joe who's reading that article, they haven't got a clue what dedicated servers even bring.

Yes, some of the BF games which really ###### people off because there were so few servers and people started hacking them to make custom servers because EA or whatever the company was didn't release an official server.

 

It's not free for the developer. They pay Microsoft in order to use the cloud servers for their game. Jon Shining even talks about this in the article. The advantage is that the developer no longer has to maintain the servers or worry about load balancing and spinning up/down servers as the game grows/shrinks.

 

It maybe "free" for the gamer, but certainly not totally free.

It's not free for the gamer, you have to pay for xb live gold to use any multiplayer features.

 

Honestly, are half the people commenting above just ######ing blind or what? I didn't even say the MS cloud was JUST for dedicated servers, I said the move from player servers to dedicated servers is nothing amazing, yes it's a great improvement over the 360 multiplayer but it is certainly nothing new.

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Yes, some of the BF games which really ****ed people off because there were so few servers and people started hacking them to make custom servers because EA or whatever the company was didn't release an official server.

 

It's not free for the gamer, you have to pay for xb live gold to use any multiplayer features.

 

Honestly, are half the people commenting above just ****ing blind or what? I didn't even say the MS cloud was JUST for dedicated servers, I said the move from player servers to dedicated servers is nothing amazing, yes it's a great improvement over the 360 multiplayer but it is certainly nothing new.

I see you have a certain superiority complex going on there buddy.

Anyway, so what if its not new? I don't think anyone was saying it was new,

what's new is

1) that the servers are offered to every devs (never been done before, if it has prove it = new)

2) devs won't have to worry about the upkeep, bandwidth and latency of those servers ( has been done for other apps/OS but not for games on the scale = new)

3) devs can use those servers for whatever they want, eg. For matchmaking, compute, etc. (again, new)

So once again maybe if you think about it a bit more you would see that Microsoft is doing for dedicated servers what they did with Xbox live introduced with the original Xbox in the early 2000s.

Sure it's not "free" for Xbox live users because we're paying for Xbox live but then what will PS4 users pay for if they won't be getting the same benefits as Xbox live users?

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Sure it's not "free" for Xbox live users because we're paying for Xbox live but then what will PS4 users pay for if they won't be getting the same benefits as Xbox live users?

AFAIK sony didn't limit online to using the online parts of the SDK like MS did with the 360, heck I KNOW sony didn't do that because that FPS game with 256 players per map had a huge PS3 cluster hosting the dedicated servers for it.

997953788_01bf388d5c_o.jpg997953862_f602966618_m.jpg

 

'devs won't have to worry about the upkeep, bandwidth and latency of those servers'

That is pretty much the only benefit, gamers don't care if they're using dedicated azure servers or ordinary dedicated game servers, it doesn't make a single bit of difference to them.

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AFAIK sony didn't limit online to using the online parts of the SDK like MS did with the 360, heck I KNOW sony didn't do that because that FPS game with 256 players per map had a huge PS3 cluster hosting the dedicated servers for it.

'devs won't have to worry about the upkeep, bandwidth and latency of those servers'

That is pretty much the only benefit, gamers don't care if they're using dedicated azure servers or ordinary dedicated game servers, it doesn't make a single bit of difference to them.

Wht you happen to post pictures of are actually not real servers they are PS3 machines running as "server" cluster for a specific game this wasn't available for all games.

Plus the game followed the same mark that users host the games (just like on Xbox 360), the ps3 clusters were there so it would be easier for players to rank up level up etc for a single game, even Sony said so.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2007/08/08/behind-the-curtain-the-warhawk-servers/

What I think you're still trying to prove is that dedicated servers has been done already. And what you're failing to understand is that no one is saying you're wrong, but there's way more going on here than you're allowing yourself to see.

And you only see my #2 point as the only benefit? What about #3 where devs can use those servers as compute clusters? and #1 that all this is offered to all devs to use at very good prices?

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