Xbox One: Microsoft Claims that Cloud Computing Can Provide Power of 3 Xbox Ones, 32 Xbox 360s


Recommended Posts

 
Microsoft re-introduced the Xbox One to the Japanese audience today during a series of livestreamed stage events at the Nico Nico Chokaigi 3 festival at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, near Tokyo.
 
Considering the results of the Xbox 360 in Japan, Microsoft is facing an uphill battle to sell the console to local gamers, and isn?t afraid to make bold claims to bolster its guns.
 
During the stage event the Microsoft Japan representative claimed that the Xbox One has roughly eight time the computational power of an Xbox 360, but that?s not all, as combining the the local machine with the cloud, the computational juice of roughly three Xbox ones units ccould be used.
 
After explaining with examples how this can be beneficial in games, for instance for handling the AI, the representative continued by saying that combining the cloud and the local machine the computational power of 32 Xbox 360 console could be reached.
 

XboxOneCloud_01-670x377.jpg?57efa4

XboxOneCloud_02-670x376.jpg?57efa4

XboxOneCloud_03-670x372.jpg?57efa4

 
It?s relevant to mention that the representative talked about computing power, not graphical fidelity, but it?s still a definitely bold and intriguing claim. I?m definitely interested in seeing if Redmond?s software giant will manage to back it up in future applications.
 
In order to get a deeper understanding of the claims, we have reached out to Microsoft asking for a comment, and we?ll keep you updated if we receive any relevant information.
 
As a funny note of color, part of the Japanese audience watching online on Nico Nico Doga found the statement pretty amusing, as you can see by the comments overlayed in the picture below. For those unfamiliar with Japanese internet lingo ?w? is their equivalent of our ?lol.?
 
It?s worth mentioning that the Nico Nico audience is always quite caustic and sarcastic, so this isn?t too surprising.
 
 

XboxOneCloud_04-670x379.jpg?57efa4

 

 

 

Source: http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/04/26/xbox-one-microsoft-claims-cloud-computing-can-provide-power-of-3-xbox-ones-32-xbox-360s/

 

Don't shoot the messenger, it's MS' decision to bring out this kind of marketing of the cloud again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do they think the mythical cloud power that has extremely limited use in real time applications like video games is somehow going to wow the japanese into buying a microsoft console for a change?

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Japan also has significantly cheaper and better coverage of high speed internet then the United States. 

 

If you had the low latency, and ultra fast speeds, essential all your doing is streaming to a high powered computer running in the cloud to a box connected to your TV.

I still don't see how this enhances graphics (less it actually streaming) but dynamic contact / background has some possibility.

 

 

Do they think the mythical cloud power that has extremely limited use in real time applications like video games is somehow going to wow the japanese into buying a microsoft console for a change?

 
Ms has a "foreign" prejudice it has to over come. 
Also, some big games in the US don't appeal in the Japanese market.

 

I wish MS act as a publisher for Japanese game developers in a way they have total freedom, and MS just has the option to export any to the United States.

I know this sounds simple, but hard in practice, they have to think and act differently in Japan.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Japan also has significantly cheaper and better coverage of high speed internet then the United States. 

 

If you had the low latency, and ultra fast speeds, essential all your doing is streaming to a high powered computer running in the cloud to a box connected to your TV.

I still don't see how this enhances graphics (less it actually streaming) but dynamic contact / background has some possibility.

 

 

It can enhance graphics to a degree, not everything is dependent on latency/real-time factors when you play a game.  I don't quite know why people are fixated on just one aspect of a game and are quick to debunk things.   There's a number of things going on in a game environment that happens on it's own and without direct player interaction.  Weather/lighting changing for example in a open world/sandboxed game is something the player can't control or effect, so why couldn't those calculations be offloaded exactly?   We've already seen physics demos, though people are quick to call those out as being fake or something.  We're not transferring huge amounts of data back and forth, in most cases we're talking KB chunks at a time.  

 

Like you said, dynamic content and anything that's not heavily dependent on latency can be offloaded, and when you break a game down into it's pieces we're talking a good number of things.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It?s relevant to mention that the representative talked about computing power, not graphical fidelity

 

the representative continued by saying that combining the cloud and the local machine the computational power of 32 Xbox 360 console could be reached.

 

First of all, how is that different? Second, you can spawn a virtually infinite number of instances and have a virtually infinite computational power thus turning your Xbox One machine into a MASTER RACE BITCOIN 1 SECOND EQUALS ONE MILLION BITCOINS GET-RICH-QUICK stuff ( :rofl: , but the point still stands).

 

Guys, could you please stop posting links to crap like this? Neowin should be better a better place than the average uneducated pop gamer dumps that can be found on the wild Internet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

 

Source: http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/04/26/xbox-one-microsoft-claims-cloud-computing-can-provide-power-of-3-xbox-ones-32-xbox-360s/

 

Don't shoot the messenger, it's MS' decision to bring out this kind of marketing of the cloud again.

 

It's not just marketing when they have demonstrated a real working demo. Feel free to find the source because it's been posted here many times.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Making bold claims they can't really backup is ballsy move for MS. Xbox anything will be a hard sell in Japan simply because they are incredibly loyal to their own brands. Only way I see them even making a dent there is not just getting more Japanese developers onboard but getting more Japanese based exclusives for the X1. For multiplatform games they will almost certainly favour the PS4 versions. If it's X1 exclusive and popular Japanese game/developer? they might start being more receptive. Naturally this is purely my opinion based on very limited knowledge and is probably wrong, so take with a grain of salt. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are about 30 threads on the Microsoft Azure servers / cloud. Can we merge them together to put all the information in one thread as its rather pointless having multiple threads since no new information has come from it since E3 2013 and its mostly just hype and speculation with examples done on test systems but no real world results.


I think this is being mistranslated. I believe they are actually referring to the number of units they expect to sell in Japan.

 

lol!, this is hilarious. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Last year it was 4X the power of Xbox One and 40X the power of Xbox 360.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/microsoft-cloud-makes-xbox-one-four-times-more-powerful/0114948

 

Microsoft downgraded the cloud? lol

 

Seems to be getting weaker, Microsoft might want to feed it some water vapour or it might be 20X SNES next announcement.

 

look at the graphics, it's supposed to be 4. the local machine and 3 in the cloud.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

look at the graphics, it's supposed to be 4. the local machine and 3 in the cloud. 

 

but keep on rolling. 

 

Yes the graphics of the Japanese diagram indicates 3X more power which including the Xbox your playing on means 4X the power, but the previous announcement was 'Cloud makes Xbox One four times more powerful' which would be 5 Xboxes including the Xbox your playing on. Its also missing a few Xbox 360's from the original announcement

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So how does "cloud computing" translate to pixels moving on my screen... I still don't understand exactly what they are trying to say this improves performance on. Since games = graphics, and graphics = bandwidth...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes the graphics of the Japanese diagram indicates 3X more power which including the Xbox your playing on means 4X the power, but the previous announcement was 'Cloud makes Xbox One four times more powerful' which would be 5 Xboxes including the Xbox your playing on. Its also missing a few Xbox 360's from the original announcement

 

4x more powerful is not 5 xboxes, its 4.

 

1x4=4 not 5 :)

So how does "cloud computing" translate to pixels moving on my screen... I still don't understand exactly what they are trying to say this improves performance on. Since games = graphics, and graphics = bandwidth...

 

Imagine your GPU being a bucket of water. half of this water goes into graphics, another half goes into other GPGPU tasks that the CPU doesn't do or don't have the capacity for.

 

now with the cloud you can remove all those GPUGPU tasks from the GPU and into the CPU and cloud computing. letting the full bucket of GPU power go to graphics. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4x more powerful is not 5 xboxes, its 4.

 

1x4=4 not 5 :)

 

Imagine your GPU being a bucket of water. half of this water goes into graphics, another half goes into other GPGPU tasks that the CPU doesn't do or don't have the capacity for.

 

now with the cloud you can remove all those GPUGPU tasks from the GPU and into the CPU and cloud computing. letting the full bucket of GPU power go to graphics. 

 

Keyword = More.

 

4X More powerful = 1(Xbox One your using)+4(4X More powerful) = 5.

 

So how does "cloud computing" translate to pixels moving on my screen... I still don't understand exactly what they are trying to say this improves performance on. Since games = graphics, and graphics = bandwidth...

 

The 'cloud' or any 'server' really can allow you to offload computations but this doesn't really affect graphics/pixels much and you have to know the differences between the CPU and GPU to understand why.

http://www.dump.com/mythbustersshow/

 

Myth Busters guys made a small presentation on the differences, basically a CPU does serial outputs while GPU does parallel. In 1080p there are 1920x1080 pixels on screen which is over 2 million individual pixels and at 60fps that means the system has to control over 120 million switches per second. A GPU does this in parallel while the CPU would change one pixel then go to the next until it does all 2 million. Its why we have GPU's in PC's rather than let the CPU output the graphics.

 

I am aware that CPU's have multiple cores and threads these days but they still don't match or are even close to the amount of threads the GPU outputs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So how does "cloud computing" translate to pixels moving on my screen... I still don't understand exactly what they are trying to say this improves performance on. Since games = graphics, and graphics = bandwidth...

 

I wouldn't worry about the cloud all that much. Its main use will be just for hosting your multiplayer games for you instead of having it hosted by other players(as consoles have done it for years). Enhancements to what you see on your screen will be unlikely or extremely limited.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's all a bunch of marketing hype. They have a distinct understanding of what this means, and while there are advantages, the way they portray it and the way the people will interpret it seems rather poor.

 

Enhancing graphics by "degrees" versus leading people to believe that an Xbox One is like 3 or 4 Xbox Ones with the cloud is rather disingenuous.

 

We can talk about cloud computing until we're blue in the face, but I'm sure the rest of you here could at least agree with that.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

let's see this year E3 conference how many game will truly have anything to do with the "CLOUD" . In fact, the xbox one haven't even unleash the ultimate performance and it's kinda dopey that they keep telling you it will need the internet for extra horsepower which isn't quite feasible at the moment for people without high speed internet. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The highest profile cloud-optimised game was Titanfall, which launched at 792p and had framerate issues. Colour me unimpressed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.