That's a lot of high praise and confidence in the Xbox Team coming from the CFO
You can read up more here -
https://wccftech.com/microsoft-will-build-best-gaming-cloud/
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Microsoft Executive VP & CFO: We Will Build The Best Gaming Cloud, Xbox Team Was Instrumental
- Thread starter christocolus
- Start date
You can read up more here -
https://wccftech.com/microsoft-will-build-best-gaming-cloud/
All the talk of AI research has me most intrigued about next gen. I don't feel 95% of today's games have AI any better than what I saw in Halo CE back in 2001. Advancing AI could re-energize the single player games market.
Edit: I intentionally talk only about streaming games. The cloud providers all offer AI solutions in many different ways.
Besides the inevitable talk about cloud-gaming tech and who owns or bought what I hope that tech sites analyze all technologies appropriately and give comparisons. While speed of light is of course inherently there as an "obstacle", it will be interesting to see what the future of game streaming can be. Currently, even streaming from my PS4 to my computer is something I would not consider as a good experience (and yes, all wired).
Besides the inevitable talk about cloud-gaming tech and who owns or bought what I hope that tech sites analyze all technologies appropriately and give comparisons. While speed of light is of course inherently there as an "obstacle", it will be interesting to see what the future of game streaming can be. Currently, even streaming from my PS4 to my computer is something I would not consider as a good experience (and yes, all wired).
The next generation is going to be really interesting to see how it plays out, I think AI and cloud computing are going to massive influences on what we get.
Microsoft always comes first to the party. they just always lose out to the cooler companies. patents work
Personally not interested in gaming that relies on a internet connection to work.
It may be the "future", but it's a future that I won't be a part of.
And no, I barely play multiplayer games.
It may be the "future", but it's a future that I won't be a part of.
And no, I barely play multiplayer games.
They will have a mix of single player and multiplayer games. Single player experiences will always matter.
Single player games that are tied to online features are no different from multiplayer.
I want to play my games alone and offline. I'm not interested in any system that prevents this.
Yep but the CPU's in modern consoles has hampered things as far as this goes. F.E.A.R still has some of the best AI around and that released in '05.
Improved graphical fidelity is an easy sell, improved AI... Not so much. I'd like to be surprised but I don't expect much to change in this regard.
This isn't exactly a 'first to the party' situation. Other companies have been deploying cloud game streaming of various flavors for years.
Microsoft can certainly execute on the technical side here. What'll be interesting is how they want to apply that technology, what kind of service they want to have in terms of content and business model. Therein lies the bigger challenge, for all players in this arena I think.
Achievement unlocked: The Awakening: made your first pivot table
When Ballmer was CEO, this was (partly) true. Nowadays though, it isn't.
Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony all have a lot of games that fit that description.
I do not play online most of the time despite having the ability to do so and my gaming experiences are just fine.
Cloud gaming is much more than just streaming. It's a whole infrastructure that includes game development, deployment, and testing. AI is more than just game AI. It's AI being used in those three things I mentioned and also help with streaming, also from a hardware point of view. There's even more than what I'm saying but it's the entire infrastructure for end to end gaming that MS is talking about for cloud gaming.
That depends. This seems to hold true for consumer projects that Nadella doesn't give a shit about.
For core focus areas like Cloud/Azure, they're boasting. Well ahead of 'cool' Google and Facebook. And nobody can touch them in enterprise.
Why? This statement is about future plans, not what is going on with Crackdown at the moment. And they are cutting edge with cloud and AI.
As an analogy, the failure of Google's Project Tango has zero bearing on their future plans for ARCore.
I wouldn't necessarily read AI in this context as being about AI agents in games. Think about things like the role of deep learning in nVidia's new ray tracing tech, or AI in network infrastructure like zedox mentioned. Could the general advancement in AI research translate to in-game AI? Yes, but I don't think that's going to be a primary focus, nor is it necessarily the case that tech has been the limiting factor for AI currently. As much as we like to imagine an FPS campaign where every enemy was indistinguishable from a skilled human opponent would be an improvement, the reality of the consequences of that sort of AI for game design mightn't be so clear cut.
People with your mindset will be cutted out by the entire market itself soon I think....no matter what brand we are talking about
Let's face it
I feel like AI in this context refers to stuff like their Fast Launch (what was the name again?) service that analyses the way gamers first play games to optimise downloads so you can play faster (think being able to play a tutorial while the rest downloads). I don't think they're looking at NPCs being more life-like.
//EDIT beaten by A normal bird.
I mean, I certainly won't be a part of it with 1.6mb download and 0.4mb upload. Not that I'd have wanted to regardless. I can barely keep up with games that have regular patches.
I definitely agree with you there. AI is the single aspect of games that's evolved the least over the years.
Microsoft have been talking about Cloud gaming since 2013. Not only that, they made bold claims about hugely ambitious titles, due to release in the early days of XBO. As we now know none of those came to pass as the technology and infrastructure was nowhere near ready for prime time.
No one doubts Cloud will play a major part in the future of gaming. But that 'future' has been a moving goalpost. 7 years on from the first mention of cloud gaming we may start to see more around 2020. Even then we'll be talking about limited applications and an even smaller number of households who will have a suitable connection.
All the major technology companies are heavily invested in Cloud. Be it their own infrastructure or partnerships. Truth is the everyday Cloud applications in mainstream use today are pretty dull and boring. The race to match dedicated gaming hardware is always a moving target. Not least the next gen of CPU's which will be magnitudes more capable than current Jaguar based hardware.
The Souls games, Uncharted series, Forza titles, there are many examples of giving players enough content to play solo while also appealing to those who want to play a bit online. If the cloud can take it one step further and offload some of the more demanding tasks then I don't see a problem with it. What we have is the traditional gamer who is having a hard time adapting to change but that's ok, the model will exist with or without you.
Agree. Which reminds me, I want to play FEAR. Today's games usually don't match that AI.
In this context, I could see that. I do remember at least a blip about gaming AI somewhere else and general AI research could/should impact gaming AI. The general concepts are similar. I think it's only a matter of time before Microsoft and other major companies take the data from player behaviors and move it to NPCs in a much more sophisticated manor than we see today with say, Forza driveators.
All this said, I think the invisible elephant in the room is Microsoft's Azure servers. I've spent most of the past 3 years trying to figure out why multiple ISPs have terrible performance on Microsoft's servers and why the UI can perform so inconsistently. EAs servers run with no hitches but Azure ping spikes all over the place. Microsoft servers aren't optimized for gaming environments. They don't work at all with IPV6 and struggle with a lot of the major ISPs due to all the extra levels of security they need. I've heard they're working on these things but there needs to be a significant performance improvement before 2020 for any of these cloud dreams to come true. This once again goes back to gaming being an afterthought for so many years. For Azure to actually be a competitive advantage, the servers need to be optimized to work with consumers.
Yeah, no question they'll have an awesome infrastructure and I don't doubt they'll always be one of the major contenders in AI technology. It's going to come down to how they use it to deliver game experiences that excite gamers and I think MS still has a lot of work in front of them in that regard.