Watch Dogs will have more of a dynamic city on the Xbox One


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Watch Dogs hits Xbox One and PS4 later this year when the next gen consoles hit store shelves. If recent reports are to believed however, the Xbox One version might be the way to go. Watch Dogs producer Dominic Guay has stated that Watch Dogs on the Xbox One will have a more dynamic city than the PS4. 

"We're still very much in the R&D period, that's what I call it, because the hardware is still new," Guay said to NowGamer. "It's obvious to us that it?s going to take a little while before we can get to the full power of those machines and harness everything. But, even now we realise that both of them have comparable power, and for us that?s good, but everyday it changes almost. We?re pushing it and we?re going to continue doing that until [Watch Dogs] ship date." 

Mr. Guay continues, "So suppose you were an AI, and the decision to make you move was run elsewhere. There would be the same latency," he continued. "If you think about it, it's not different than you holding the controller when you're playing multiplayer. It might allow someone to use one dedicated machine just for on AI. What kind of AI could I do with that? That's interesting." 

He then goes on to mention Microsoft?s cloud service that seems like it will be a crucial component to the Xbox One. Apparently physics calculations, similarly, aren't dependent on strict timing, "The way a tree reacts to weather, it's physics, right?" Guay tells OXM UK. "It's bending materials. Well, what if I could run that on the cloud? It doesn't need to be fully synced. There are occasions where there will be an advantage, but it's clear in the short term there's plenty of power within the machines. That's where our engineers are working." 

In addition to those comments Mr. Guay went on to talk a bit about the graphics and the ?dynamism? of the city. Here is what he had to say: 

"For example, we?re able to simulate the water in full 3D, if you go on a boat the waves that form will affect other boats. We?re also able to spend more time giving brains to the other people on the streets so that they can basically be smarter, and there can be more of them. It?s what I call dynamism; basically, the way the city reacts to you, we are able to push further on the Xbox One.?

http://www.gamingtarget.com/article.php?artid=13270

 

Personally, this is exactly what I've been referring to regarding the cloud. Tree physics offloaded in the cloud because its not latency sensitive is such a good example. I don't know why this hasn't been picked up and talked about more. I wonder how much we're going to see this, this generation?

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I have serious doubts that one of the first games for xbone will actually use the cloud effectively.

Esp. Considering that the always on req is gone and many people will expect to play offline.

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Sounds fantastic, I know a lot of people are skeptical about "the cloud" and how MS are trying to use it but this is the type of stuff I expected to see. 

I have said for a while to people that shiny graphics don't really impress me that much, im perfectly happy with the current gen's aesthetics. This to me however sounds like improved quality on game play which is something that nobody can argue with being great.

This is also coming from someone working on the game so it's not some MS PR guy, I can't imagine they are aligned with MS in anyway and would want to annoy Sony by embellishing things like this.

 

 

I have serious doubts that one of the first games for xbone will actually use the cloud effectively.

Esp. Considering that the always on req is gone and many people will expect to play offline.

 

 

You honestly expect people to want to play offline? I would be surprised if 50% of the people who actually complained about this, have any reason to play offline. 

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You honestly expect people to want to play offline? I would be surprised if 50% of the people who actually complained about this, have any reason to play offline. 

Going away on a business trip and internet access costs extra.

Renting a summer home for a week that has no internet.

Going to a relatives house for the weekend that does not have internet.

I can keep going, but I think you get the idea.

And before you say none of those are realistic, all are conditions just I alone have personally faced.

So yeah, having a console that can work offline is a nice feature.

 

And this sounds pretty kick ass. Like the use of the cloud here. The good news is there is nothing stopping Sony from also implementing a cloud of their own down the road if it does wind up panning out. Or developers for that matter hosting their own cloud. So if this really does take off eventually, I hope people are not expecting it is somehow going to be exclusive to the One. All MS is doing is providing it for developers initially. 

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If you're going fon a business trip, you or the company WILL be paying for Internet anyway.

if you're going on a summer home, well Internet should be one of your last worries, just as your games console should be your absolute lats worry.

OH NO, a whole weekend without Internet. yeah that would kill me /s

 

I feel like you keep embellishing and exaggerating your examples a lot in these situations.

 

In any case, the Xbox One version without internet available will be playable, it'll just revert to a less dynamic city like the PS version. so don't get to worked up. 

 

interesting stuff anyway, more dynamic environments is one of the things that have kept immersion behind in games. And no nothing prevents Sony from doing this, EXCEPT, first they need to hire a BIG chunk of either Azure or Amazon, and theywill need to do it at full price. MS rents it from itself at a very low price, and then provides it to the developers. and even if Sony where to do it. they would also have to create the API's and SDK's and all this for it. Best case scenario Sony is 2-3 years away from implementing it if they could spare the money. 

 

Developers doing cloud on their own however is EXTREMELY unlikely. the very reason this hasn't been done yet it because it doesn't make economic sense. Maybe for EA since they're so big they could do what MS did a create one cloud system shared between all their games. but developing a cloud solution and renting cloud power for single games is way to costly, especially since you need to provide for peak usage, not median. Whereas when MS does it,. they give everyone a huge pool of power to use from, shared between all Xbox one games, this means they can balance the load and necessary server power a lot better, and the developers/publishers themselves, they only pay a small sum for access. They don't have to pay for constant availablility of peak usage. 

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Going away on a business trip and internet access costs extra.

Renting a summer home for a week that has no internet.

Going to a relatives house for the weekend that does not have internet.

I can keep going, but I think you get the idea.

And before you say none of those are realistic, all are conditions just I alone have personally faced.

So yeah, having a console that can work offline is a nice feature.

 

And this sounds pretty kick ass. Like the use of the cloud here. The good news is there is nothing stopping Sony from also implementing a cloud of their own down the road if it does wind up panning out. Or developers for that matter hosting their own cloud. So if this really does take off eventually, I hope people are not expecting it is somehow going to be exclusive to the One. All MS is doing is providing it for developers initially. 

you guys are really trying to stretch this,

who goes on a business trip and takes their xbox with them, what are we in 5th grade? you go for business not to bring your console and game it up

renting a summer home probably for vacation, most normal people go on vacation to leave behind electronics and actually do something, again we arent in 5th grade who plans a vacation then brings a console to sit around and play? just stay home

Going to a relatives house to visit, not to say hey im here and set up your games to play

Its like you are saying you just cannot live a day without playing video games which is pretty darn sad, especially for adults.

 

I feel those complaining are complainging to complain and exaggerating to complain. Anyone who buys this console at launch more than likely has internet, if you dont then i dont even know what to say.

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The PS4 can (does?) have access to cloud servers too. So isn't this more about developer laziness or FUD info rather than "Xbone > PS4"?

 

Also, where did they say that they are completely offloading all of this calculation to the cloud? If the console isn't connected, can it process all of this stuff on it's own? If that's the case then the platform quality will come down to performance. (as usual)

 

If it's not the case, and all of those processes are completely offloaded to the cloud, doesn't that effectively make the game an online-only game? I mean, you COULD technically play it offline, but it would have severely reduced game mechanics. Which means you're getting an inferior version of the product. Sounds bad for everyone.

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What I DON'T want to see is for this to be an excuse for third parties to require an online connection. That's what I would find crappy.

 

Kind of like how Blizzard tried to pull off the "Oh, but we gave you Diablo III online so you can play with your friends at any time!" despite the fact that you can have server issues just trying to play singleplayer...

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you guys are really trying to stretch this,

who goes on a business trip and takes their xbox with them, what are we in 5th grade? you go for business not to bring your console and game it up

renting a summer home probably for vacation, most normal people go on vacation to leave behind electronics and actually do something, again we arent in 5th grade who plans a vacation then brings a console to sit around and play? just stay home

Going to a relatives house to visit, not to say he im here and set up your games to play

Its like you are saying you just cannot live a day without playing video games which is pretty darn sad, especially for adults.

 

I feel those complaining are complainging to complain and exaggerating to complain. Anyone who buys this console at launch more than likely has internet, if you dont then i dont even know what to say.

 

Okay, so if you go on a business trip, there is NO POSSIBLE REASON to have some fun? So you expect people on a business trip to work 16 hours per day (assuming 8 hours of sleep) instead of 8 hours?  Please. 

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The PS4 can (does?) have access to cloud servers too. So isn't this more about developer laziness or FUD info rather than "Xbone > PS4"?

 

Also, where did they say that they are completely offloading all of this calculation to the cloud? If the console isn't connected, can it process all of this stuff on it's own? If that's the case then the platform quality will come down to performance. (as usual)

 

If it's not the case, and all of those processes are completely offloaded to the cloud, doesn't that effectively make the game an online-only game? I mean, you COULD technically play it offline, but it would have severely reduced game mechanics. Which means you're getting an inferior version of the product. Sounds bad for everyone.

Cloud is a very broad term. Gaiki is a cloud platform but its not in the same sense Azure is. The X1 was designed to do cloud processing (hardware compression, decompression to offload from the CPU, memory gates) whereas the PS4 wasn't so architecturally it wouldn't be feasible. It is technically possible but with the load the CPU would entail and no memory gates, it may not be worth the effort. If you see what I mean? 

 

What I DON'T want to see is for this to be an excuse for third parties to require an online connection. That's what I would find crappy.

 

Kind of like how Blizzard tried to pull off the "Oh, but we gave you Diablo III online so you can play with your friends at any time!" despite the fact that you can have server issues just trying to play singleplayer...

This is the first thing which came to my mind. The developers more than likely won't include an offline fall back if the user isn't online and the game is using Azure, so are we going to see loads of third party online only restrictions? 

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Okay, so if you go on a business trip, there is NO POSSIBLE REASON to have some fun? So you expect people on a business trip to work 16 hours per day (assuming 8 hours of sleep) instead of 8 hours?  Please. 

no i dont, but you find other items to do. go out with your business partners, try and meet people, honestly if i saw a colleague show up with a bag with his game system on a business trip i would probably laugh in his face. what did they do 20 years ago on a business trip? its sad how the world depends on video games, cell phones, always on the interenet and when you cant have it for a day its like the world is ending.

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This seems to go against the "devs code for the lowest common denominator" argument.

 

Anyway, if it can take advantage of the cloud to provide us with an even better experience, then I am all for it (as long as it is also playable off-line).

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Okay, so if you go on a business trip, there is NO POSSIBLE REASON to have some fun? So you expect people on a business trip to work 16 hours per day (assuming 8 hours of sleep) instead of 8 hours?  Please. 

 

It's funny how people seem to want to come up with excuses or reasons why this "cloud thing" can't work or won't work or will fail or w/e.  Guys, just move on.   If the system has a connection to the internet then the game should be smart enough to take advantage of it, if it doesn't then it just doesn't.    You're game isn't going to look worse or way better, saying the world will be more dynamic doesn't mean it's graphics will be 2x better than before, just that more things will be going on in unscripted ways compared to before.  

 

It's almost laughable that everytime some story is posted about a developer using MS's cloud option for their game we have the same posts about "but when I go on a trip and take my system with me and don't have internet... etc etc"   So?  Just play the game offline, unless the developer wants to be an ass about it and force online for their game (which has zero to do with what MS is doing) then you're not really going to miss out.  As for the use of it, why not?  Most of the time my systems have access to the internet, why not use it?  Why shouldn't it be a option for developers to use?  

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I honestly think MS will get some "preferred" treatment from Developers because they were bold enough to try the "DRM" thing for them....

Has anyone noticed that AAA developers aren't upset or mad at MS at all for attempting this.

Sure they aren't mad with Sony for NOT even bothering with DRM....

 

But I believe MS, will get the "wink,wink" treatment.

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By now its ample clear that PS4 is somewhat faster than XBox One. Whatever low priority rendering tasks like trees will be rendered by the reserve power of PS4.

He has not said anything about PS4 may be because they haven't yet explored their options with it. But news reporters must give a twist on everything which puts M Night Shyalalalala to shame.

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By now its ample clear that PS4 is somewhat faster than XBox One. Whatever low priority rendering tasks like trees will be rendered by the reserve power of PS4.

He has not said anything about PS4 may be because they haven't yet explored their options with it. But news reporters must give a twist on everything which puts M Night Shyalalalala to shame.

 

So far when developers talk about them in the same context they've said that they're close.  Kojima said the difference is minimal and even in this above post they say "It's obvious to us that it?s going to take a little while before we can get to the full power of those machines and harness everything. But, even now we realise that both of them have comparable power,".  So they're saying the same thing.   Honestly, what more do people want?  The PS4 is going the raw power path while the Xbox one, even without the cloud, is going to use newer software/API abilities to make up for the slower hardware.  In the end they'll fall close it seems.   Any multiplatform game should be very close as always and first party games will probably have little difference as well.

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So far when developers talk about them in the same context they've said that they're close.  Kojima said the difference is minimal and even in this above post they say "It's obvious to us that it?s going to take a little while before we can get to the full power of those machines and harness everything. But, even now we realise that both of them have comparable power,".  So they're saying the same thing.   Honestly, what more do people want?  The PS4 is going the raw power path while the Xbox one, even without the cloud, is going to use newer software/API abilities to make up for the slower hardware.  In the end they'll fall close it seems.   Any multiplatform game should be very close as always and first party games will probably have little difference as well.

 

This is what a lot of people don't get... The XB1 can handle the regular physics on the disc/digital without issue...

 

they fail to recognize "the hand off" of petty task to the cloud...  Imagine the cloud handling: Clouds, wind blowing, leaves swaying to the wind, snow accumulation on the ground, dead zombies everywhere (even slowly decomposing) but not disappearing off screen, and other petty task like this.  Are handed to your sidekick "Cloud" and now you can say well I now "have a free process" how about I give this NPC something to talk about other than the same stupid 3-4 canned lines...  Or how about the A.I. in shooters don't all run to the same spot to get slaughtered now, because they can "all think not to go to that spot..."

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Cloud computing is not something unique to the Xbone. The PC and PS4 are just as capable. (And no, I'm not talking about Gaikai)

 

And to reiterate, they haven't specified how those versions will differ. Will those same cloud processes for the Xbone be done natively on the PC/PS4? Will they be done natively on the Xbone if there is no internet connection? Will there be cloud support for any platform other than the Xbone? There is a lot of missing information in this article.

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This is what a lot of people don't get... The XB1 can handle the regular physics on the disc/digital without issue...

 

they fail to recognize "the hand off" of petty task to the cloud...  Imagine the cloud handling: Clouds, wind blowing, leaves swaying to the wind, snow accumulation on the ground, dead zombies everywhere (even slowly decomposing) but not disappearing off screen, and other petty task like this.  Are handed to your sidekick "Cloud" and now you can say well I now "have a free process" how about I give this NPC something to talk about other than the same stupid 3-4 canned lines...  Or how about the A.I. in shooters don't all run to the same spot to get slaughtered now, because they can "all think not to go to that spot..."

 

Zombies disappearing is to reduce video memory and things to be drawn.  Having the cloud won't magically make zombies not disappear.  If memory is still too high, or the visual lag is too much no cloud power will change that.  The only difference is the cloud can say:  Draw this texture, now this one, now this one. Whereas before the game would have to calculate out which texture to draw before doing it.

 

Also, the NPC talking would be still scripted.  It still takes up space and such to store talking.  The cloud could be used to handle the dialogs (like most mmo's).   See the thing to remember, is the cloud is nothing more than big game servers which send data back to the console saying draw X instead of determine what X should be then draw it.

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By now its ample clear that PS4 is somewhat faster than XBox One. Whatever low priority rendering tasks like trees will be rendered by the reserve power of PS4.

He has not said anything about PS4 may be because they haven't yet explored their options with it. But news reporters must give a twist on everything which puts M Night Shyalalalala to shame.

 

 

It might be a teensy weensy bit faster, BUT that's all negated by the fact that Sony decided to not provide a high level and well developed and optimized SDK toolset for the developers instead giving them a low level do everything yourself approach, witht he PR speak that it will supposedly offer better performance(yeah, only for first party devs on their 3-4th title 4+ years down the line) whereas the directx based xbox sdk will let developers get the most out of the hardware right away. 

Cloud computing is not something unique to the Xbone. The PC and PS4 are just as capable. (And no, I'm not talking about Gaikai)

 

And to reiterate, they haven't specified how those versions will differ. Will those same cloud processes for the Xbone be done natively on the PC/PS4? Will they be done natively on the Xbone if there is no internet connection? Will there be cloud support for any platform other than the Xbone? There is a lot of missing information in this article.

 

Read my first reply in this thread to see why Sony won't be suing any cloud in the same realm as the Xbox anytime soon or for the first few years. 

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Cloud computing is not something unique to the Xbone. The PC and PS4 are just as capable. (And no, I'm not talking about Gaikai)

 

so the ps4 and pc have this infrastructure built and ready, and development tools necessary to seamlessly integrate these features into games? Nope. Do you understand what kind of work this takes to implement? Why did Sony purchase Gaikai for $380 million dollars if the concept of game streaming is so simple? Why didn't they just rent a bunch of servers themselves,and write some software?

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you guys are really trying to stretch this,

who goes on a business trip and takes their xbox with them, what are we in 5th grade? you go for business not to bring your console and game it up

renting a summer home probably for vacation, most normal people go on vacation to leave behind electronics and actually do something, again we arent in 5th grade who plans a vacation then brings a console to sit around and play? just stay home

Going to a relatives house to visit, not to say hey im here and set up your games to play

Its like you are saying you just cannot live a day without playing video games which is pretty darn sad, especially for adults.

 

I feel those complaining are complainging to complain and exaggerating to complain. Anyone who buys this console at launch more than likely has internet, if you dont then i dont even know what to say.

 

It's more like saying... I bought this expensive gaming console, I would like to play with it anywhere, anytime I want and not to think about ... will it work?

 

Also last time I checked, the Xbox's main audience is not kids.  :rolleyes:

 

I worked in cruises, overseas, where the internet is not only crappy but expensive too. Even though I didn't play with the console everyday,  it was great to have during the slow days or when the co-workers wanted to get together. You on the other hand sound like a kid, with no experience and complaining about other people's fair concerns.

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And this sounds pretty kick ass. Like the use of the cloud here. The good news is there is nothing stopping Sony from also implementing a cloud of their own down the road if it does wind up panning out. Or developers for that matter hosting their own cloud. 

 

You're absolutely right that Sony could implement their own cloud services for developers and I truly hope they do. For developers it would be too costly, making games is already extremely expensive. The thing that would take Sony a long time would be making a good SDK which is no small feat for something like this, but I do hope Sony does go ahead with this. 

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