"Of course PS4 can do Cloud Computing", says President of Sony'

[MindTrickz]

 

Microsoft has been keen to promote Xbox One's use of the cloud. Xbox One's official website, for example, states that "thanks to the power of the cloud, Xbox One will keep getting better." Cloud computing supposedly makes Xbox One four times more powerful. It also justifies why Xbox One is effectively an always-on console.

 

But what about Sony's next-gen machine? Sure, it can stream games via the cloud-powered Gaikai. But can it also follow Microsoft's step in offloading computation to the cloud? "Of course," Sony's Shuhei Yoshida said.

 

"Linking, matchmaking... there are already many computations being done on the cloud side," Yoshida told Polygon. And although PS4 won't require an internet connection to use, Yoshida said that "if your title needs [an] online connection to provide some online features: Go for it."

 

There you go. Both consoles can do cloud computing. Although be warned--it's all pretty much a load of rubbish either way. Hooray for marketing!

 

http://www.shacknews.com/article/79760/sony-of-course-ps4-can-do-cloud-computing

 

 

But off course, we all know that "cloud computing" is a fancy buzzword that doesn't mean anything.

[LaP]

 

Cloud computing supposedly makes Xbox One four times more powerful.

 

rofl

 

Joke of the year award hands down.

[MindTrickz]

rofl

 

Joke of the year award hands down.

 

CPU and GPU use the fastest  input/output available on hardware, and now Microsoft pretends it can send the same instructions to a server over WAN, execute them, send them back to your Xbox over WAN, and tells you this method has better performance. It's just completely absurd.

 

And then you have many Xbox One fans believing this and use it as their primary argument why the Xbox One will be better in bringing you the "next gen" and why the PS4 isn't.

[MikeChipshop Member]

CPU and GPU use the fastest  input/output available on hardware, and now Microsoft pretends it can send the same instructions to a server over WAN, execute them, send them back to your Xbox over WAN, and tells you this method has better performance. It's just completely absurd.

 

And then you have many Xbox One fans believing this and use it as their primary argument why the Xbox One will be better in bringing you the "next gen" and why the PS4 isn't.

 

You've got some reading to do sonny.

[Growled Member]

But off course, we all know that "cloud computing" is a fancy buzzword that doesn't mean anything.

 

It's over hyped nonsense to me.

[MikeChipshop Member]

Cloud computing may very well be the in buzz word at the moment but the benefits it can bring to all aspects of our lives is very real.

No doubt Sony will put something in place for the Playstation.

[LaP]

Cloud computing may very well be the in buzz word at the moment but the benefits it can bring to all aspects of our lives is very real.

No doubt Sony will put something in place for the Playstation.

 

 

No doubt. But as far as gaming goes the latency is too unreliable right now for it to be a viable option. It's gonna be used here and there for background/persistant thingies. But it wont make the consoles more powerful. Will be useful for persistant worlds though.

[ctrl_alt_delete]

""Linking, matchmaking... there are already many computations being done on the cloud side," Yoshida told Polygon" I think that's a very loose sense of what cloud computing is.

it's clear you guys have no programming knowledge or even understand whats being offered or it's use case.

not everything will be done in the cloud. the console can take care of things in the foreground/immediate events while the cloud takes care of things in the background or things that doesn't need to be updated EVERY frame. this gives the console itself more resources to do more computations on foreground events.

anyways, in the coming years we will see if i's really marketing or something real.

every console can do computations in the cloud yes, but Microsoft is offering to devs FREE of charge while on other platforms they would have to brunt the cost of said cloud infrastructure.

it's the difference between having an 18 player match and a 128 player match.

it's the difference between getting kicked out of a game because the host left and being able to keep playing even if someone leaves

[BajiRav]

CPU and GPU use the fastest  input/output available on hardware, and now Microsoft pretends it can send the same instructions to a server over WAN, execute them, send them back to your Xbox over WAN, and tells you this method has better performance. It's just completely absurd.

 

And then you have many Xbox One fans believing this and use it as their primary argument why the Xbox One will be better in bringing you the "next gen" and why the PS4 isn't.

Not even the fastest CPU/GPU combo will be able to do what Forza 5's drivatars are supposed to do. You need the magic of the cloud for that. It's not that PS4 can't do it but it doesn't have the dev. tools + infrastructure baked into the core platform as Xb1 does.

That's the difference. Microsoft will have upper hand here (software company, infrastructure) just like Sony has upper hand at hardware.

[Doli]

Not even the fastest CPU/GPU combo will be able to do what Forza 5's drivatars are supposed to do. You need the magic of the cloud for that. It's not that PS4 can't do it but it doesn't have the dev. tools + infrastructure baked into the core platform as Xb1 does.

That's the difference. Microsoft will have upper hand here (software company, infrastructure) just like Sony has upper hand at hardware.

A Drivatar is just AI based on how a player drives for others to race against if the player is not online. They just compute data from the game and send it to their cloud service where an AI profile is created and used for others. This is not that special and the console is already doing most of the work tracking the players driving habits and just packaging and sending it. People think this cloud computing will do big things during a game but this stuff is done outside of the game and the console can easily do this type of work after a race.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/6/11/4420778/forza-motorsport-5-preview-e3-2013-drivatar-cloud

[LaP]

Not even the fastest CPU/GPU combo will be able to do what Forza 5's drivatars are supposed to do. You need the magic of the cloud for that. It's not that PS4 can't do it but it doesn't have the dev. tools + infrastructure baked into the core platform as Xb1 does.

That's the difference. Microsoft will have upper hand here (software company, infrastructure) just like Sony has upper hand at hardware.

 

Yep but what does Drivatars will actually bring to the game ? The last thing i want is a crappy online experience with baddies in my offline driving game. In one of the E3 demo just when the guy is about to explain the Drivatars you can see 2 cars hitting each others for no obvious reason.

 

It's not like building a good AI is impossible offline.

 

We have yet to see if Drivatars will really improve the AI of the game. The idea is not bad (kinda Deep Blue style) but it will still require lot of works from the dev to make it remotely realistic. I feel like asking a bunch of actually good players to play many games, record those games and use them as a DB to build an AI would actually be more effective than tracking millions of games where 95% of the players are terrible.

[MindTrickz]

Not even the fastest CPU/GPU combo will be able to do what Forza 5's drivatars are supposed to do. You need the magic of the cloud for that. It's not that PS4 can't do it but it doesn't have the dev. tools + infrastructure baked into the core platform as Xb1 does.

That's the difference. Microsoft will have upper hand here (software company, infrastructure) just like Sony has upper hand at hardware.

 

Essentially they are giving publishers access to certain amounts of Azure resources (storage and CPU cycles) and letting them decide what to do with it. Any claims to increasing the "power" of the console are pure conjecture. And on top of that, the Xbox One is doing all the heavy lifting as far as Drivatar is concerned; by tracking and profiling the driving habits and sending it to Microsoft servers; on in turn make that AI profile play while the player is not there.

[MindTrickz]

""Linking, matchmaking... there are already many computations being done on the cloud side," Yoshida told Polygon" I think that's a very loose sense of what cloud computing is.

it's clear you guys have no programming knowledge or even understand whats being offered or it's use case.

not everything will be done in the cloud. the console can take care of things in the foreground/immediate events while the cloud takes care of things in the background or things that doesn't need to be updated EVERY frame. this gives the console itself more resources to do more computations on foreground events.

anyways, in the coming years we will see if i's really marketing or something real.

every console can do computations in the cloud yes, but Microsoft is offering to devs FREE of charge while on other platforms they would have to brunt the cost of said cloud infrastructure.

it's the difference between having an 18 player match and a 128 player match.

it's the difference between getting kicked out of a game because the host left and being able to keep playing even if someone leaves

 

I think it comes down to a couple things. First and foremost was Microsoft's decision to only have 5GB of RAM available to devs probably happened before they realized the PS4 would have 7, and those 7 would be better-integrated with the GPU. The Xbox One boards for the console were probably already being fabricated and more importantly it would likely have fudged their cost projections to toss another couple of GBs in it.

 

So what could Microsoft do to combat the superior hardware of the PS4? This is where the "Cloud" comes in. By adding "cloud computing support"; which is more more of a software thing that they can develop in the meantime without changing the cost of their console and acts as a sales bulletpoint of the technologically illiterate.

 

Companies never want to release something less powerful than their competitors, so when they get the jump on you in specs you have to compensate somehow - more features or a lower price. Sometimes when you're up against a wall those "features" aren't substantial, like MS's Grand Magic Cloud Strategy.

[NateB1]

 

I think it comes down to a couple things. First and foremost was Microsoft's decision to only have 5GB of RAM available to devs probably happened before they realized the PS4 would have 7, and those 7 would be better-integrated with the GPU. The Xbox One boards for the console were probably already being fabricated and more importantly it would likely have fudged their cost projections to toss another couple of GBs in it.

 

So what could Microsoft do to combat the superior hardware of the PS4? This is where the "Cloud" comes in. By adding "cloud computing support"; which is more more of a software thing that they can develop in the meantime without changing the cost of their console and acts as a sales bulletpoint of the technologically illiterate.

 

Companies never want to release something less powerful than their competitors, so when they get the jump on you in specs you have to compensate somehow - more features or a lower price. Sometimes when you're up against a wall those "features" aren't substantial, like MS's Grand Magic Cloud Strategy.

 

 

Yeah, because scaling computing tasks to operate seamlessly in datacenters, doing load-balance testing, hooking up and configuring 300K servers, writing APIs, and doing all the network latency performance tuning is less expensive than redesigning a console at the last minute. :rolleyes:

[spaceelf]

What Sonys cloud compute can do is...nothing the Xbox 360/PS3 couldn't!

 

Microsofts can be used for dedicated servers, sharing player/game created content, MMOs and things like that.

 

The point that people are missing is, even though it absolutely CAN BE DONE on the PS4, developers don't have to do it all themselves with the X1.

 

You can bet Sony is looking to do things with Gaikai to combat this at some point...they'll talk it down as much as they possibly can until then!

[Aaron Olive]

PS3 did a form of cloud computing years ago, remember Folding @ home? also looking at the Xbox One Architecture Panel back in May shows they were overhyping it more than they should have.

 

[dead.cell]

I feel it's worth noting that debating this whole thing is rather useless. We don't know what all of this will entail, how these "features" will actually pan out, or what benefits they may provide us with in the long term. All we know is what may be possible, but it isn't something tangible that we can measure, especially given how many dependencies cloud computing relies on in order to work and function properly.

 

With all that being said, I think we should just note cloud computing with a big asterisk until we can actually see it in action. Just my two cents though.

[Tha Bloo Monkee]

Who needs cloud computing when you can have hardware that does it better?

[Woelfel]

Who needs cloud computing when you can have hardware that does it better?

 

There are some things that the cloud can do that local hardware can't and vice versa.

[astropheed Veteran]

Who needs cloud computing when you can have hardware that does it better?

 

No one, but that has nothing to do with this...

 

They do have hardware that can do it better, the problem is are they actually utilising it or is it a marketing show.

[NateB1]

Who needs cloud computing when you can have hardware that does it better?

 

I agree - everyone needs to have their own datacenter!

 

 

We'll see how it works out in reality, but I can envision playing a game with a battle involving thousands of AI characters fighting each other in realtime - the AI calculations all being computed in the cloud.  Math calculations can be highly compressed and uploaded/downloaded with little delay, esp. if the environmental information is already in the cloud.  You couldn't do that with local hardware.

[Blackhearted]

I agree - everyone needs to have their own datacenter!

 

 

We'll see how it works out in reality, but I can envision playing a game with a battle involving thousands of AI characters fighting each other in realtime - the AI calculations all being computed in the cloud.  Math calculations can be highly compressed and uploaded/downloaded with little delay, esp. if the environmental information is already in the cloud.  You couldn't do that with local hardware.

 

It doesn't matter that the cloud could, in theory, compute the ai for "thousands of characters fighting" when the hardware(especially the much weaker Xbox One) couldn't display even a 5th of all those characters at once.

[NateB1]

It doesn't matter that the cloud could, in theory, compute the ai for "thousands of characters fighting" when the hardware(especially the much weaker Xbox One) couldn't display even a 5th of all those characters at once.

 

Using lower res-figures for those far away, and using other optimization techniques, I think it might be possible.  Maybe not humans in photorealistic detail, but spaceships or other characters that don't require such a high-poly count.

[+Red King Subscriber²]

<p>

There are some things that the cloud can do that local hardware can't and vice versa.

You mean, like being a server, matchmaking, providing downloads, and other miscellaneous expected tasks? Those are the expected tasks for non-local hardware. Everything else local hardware does better, significantly better. Xbox One is just making bad publicity if it cannot push a single player game and requires online access to offload some tasks. And what exactly does this mean? A thousand x thousand battle will be offloaded to a server and if the user doesn't have a connection good enough to stream all that back? Or has bandwidth caps? Or the game support gets dropped? Or the closes server is 800ms away? There is nothing next gen admitting that your CPU is too weak to handle basic AI.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>EDIT: And Neowin fully messed up IE10 support.</p>

[MindTrickz]

Yeah, because scaling computing tasks to operate seamlessly in datacenters, doing load-balance testing, hooking up and configuring 300K servers, writing APIs, and doing all the network latency performance tuning is less expensive than redesigning a console at the last minute. :rolleyes:

 

Ehmm, you are aware that Microsoft is making use of their Azure Cloud Platform, correct? They are not actually building from the ground up.

 

The problem is that what Microsoft is promising is theoretically impossible. Cloud computing can do many things but increasing performance by sending CPU instructions to a server is a dynamic real time environment is not one of them.  300.000 servers sound impressive but they all run virtually so we have no idea what "a server" means and the vast majority of those servers will be used for multiplayer servers and the vast amount of content Microsoft is going to need to distribute online.

 

Besides, 300k servers thing i s a gimmick. 300,000 servers is the entire Azure architecture. There are not 300,000 physical servers. Most are virtual servers on the same hardware. The whole Azure network does a ton of other things. Now one of them with be all the XB1 stuff.