Microsoft reveals that the Xbox One is future proof thanks to the cloud

Today at Microsoft's smaller, lower-key Xbox One architecture and hardware panel, Microsoft technical executives elaborated and expanded on how the new console will interact with and be improved by cloud computing.

The Xbox One is a powerful piece of hardware with 8GB RAM, 64-bit processors and plenty more muscle. But as time passes this hardware will age. As Xbox One Director of development Boyd Multerer pointed out, "You'll still have a limited number of transistors in your house; in your box."

But the Xbox One is built to communicate with servers in the cloud to increase the computational potential of the system. Boyd continued "[As a developer] I can start doing things like shifting latency insensitive things to the cloud. You may have a limited number of transistors in your house, but you have an unlimited number of transistors in the cloud"

As bandwidth improves, there is potential for actual game computations to be off-loaded to servers in the cloud, essentially allowing the Xbox One to become more powerful over time as more and more transistors are connected to Microsoft's cloud infrastructure.

"We have an ever-evolving, powerful world [in the cloud] that we can tap into."

"This is not going to be as static a console as we've seen in the past," Multerer enthused.

Given that the Xbox One doesn't require an online connection, it's unknown specifically how game developers will be able to take advantage of cloud computation. One potential possibility is that only gamers connected to the internet with a fast enough connection will be able to take advantage of the computational power of servers in the cloud and experience an increasingly powerful-feeling gaming box. IGN expects to learn more specifics on the Xbox One's innovations at E3 2013.



This is a very interesting feature for me as potentially developers would be able to "virtually" upgrade the console using the could, allowing you to play games that wouldn't normally run on the system at high graphics

Sounds great, very clever and will work just great for me when I take my console on holiday with me where I have no internet connection....oh......

It worked a treat for online didnt it.. oh wait

N1NJA FWG wrote:Sounds great, very clever and will work just great for me when I take my console on holiday with me where I have no internet connection....oh......

I can see this ending up kind of like PC gaming, for I stance if your not connected to the cloud the game will run on "medium" settings whereas if it's connected you'll get "high" settings

Thats not the case though is it Tom - your PC visuals are driven by your hardware not where it is set up - doesnt matter if you are using it in your living room, spare bedroom or in the shed.

This is clearly MS finding a solution around the fact their machine has inferior hardware compared to PS4 - if it was anywhere near as powerful as Sony's new offering they would have made a big song and dance about it.

I can see this kind of thing is going to be a pig for cross console developers.....

N1NJA FWG wrote:Thats not the case though is it Tom - your PC visuals are driven by your hardware not where it is set up - doesnt matter if you are using it in your living room, spare bedroom or in the shed.

It could be the case though mate, just as an example say Crysis 4 arrives next year, On PC you'll have Low, Medium and High setting whereas on console out of the box you'll be stuck with modified Medium settings.

However if your connected to the cloud Crytek could give the game the option to run certain assets through the cloud (say textures for eg) this would have a two fold advantage.

Firstly, with the cloud running textures they could be bumped up to High settings as they'll be streamed from a server and secondly this would free up memory aswell as CPU and GPU bandwidth allowing the console to run a different process on a "high" setting

It shouldnt come down to this though - if the hardware can't handle the visuals then fine but all this is going to do is add back end cost to the developer for having to make up the performance deficit....

N1NJA FWG wrote:It shouldnt come down to this though - if the hardware can't handle the visuals then fine but all this is going to do is add back end cost to the developer for having to make up the performance deficit....

Well that is true however it's not a requirement so it's really up to the developer to take advantage of the option or not.

As far as not being up to the task, so far the Ram and CPU are running exactly the same specs on both consoles with the One running DDR 3 and the PS4 running GDDR5, both have pros and cons.

As far as GPU's go it seems that both consoles are running a modified AMD GPU but as yet no specs have been revealed

Killswitchmad wrote:

N1NJA FWG wrote:It shouldnt come down to this though - if the hardware can't handle the visuals then fine but all this is going to do is add back end cost to the developer for having to make up the performance deficit....

Well that is true however it's not a requirement so it's really up to the developer to take advantage of the option or not.

True, and if they don't its not going to look good for MS if their versions of cross platform games start to look a little shoddy next to the competition lol

Its a clever system, no doubt but for some time now developers have been falling left right and centre because development costs have gotten too high and they are struggling to recoup the outlay and turn sufficient profit. One of the key areas for devs this time round was for costs to be more manageable. Unified PC style architecture on both next gen consoles was clearly a good starting point but this kind of tech (regardless of the pluses) surely has got to be a headache in the making in some quarters.

This has now been explained in a little more detail,

Basically when connected to the cloud each Xbox One is supported by the virtual equivalent of three more Xbox One's. A developer can choose to move certain processes to the cloud (lighting for eg) these processes will typically be the ones that don't need updating with every single frame of animation therefore cancelling out any latency issue that could crop up.