CNBC-"Sony doesn't Have a Cloud Presence" "MS has Big Head start"

Debating if you are an alt or not is not a debate, its obvious observation.

Then you follow up on your second account (unless there are 2 of you sad enough to work together):

Case in point.

ON TOPIC:

Sony has segregated Cloud Services true, it doesn't have the infrastructure already in place, you could argue that they will use AWS, or not. who knows.

Cloud gaming is not a good thing, it takes more control away from the consumer, what you save by not needing an "expensive physical hardware device" you lose in competitive pricing, ownership, modification, resale ... you lose EVERYTHING. It works for Music/Film where you just consume, but gaming is on a different scale completely. Anyone cheering on game streaming is an idiot.

Cloud compute in games, I'm yet to see ANY good examples considering Microsoft have banged on about it for 5+ years.

Maybe Star Citizen (using Amazon) and Amazon's MMO will show how its done, but at the moment? Cloud advantage is non existent, and there doesn't appear to be any good gaming "proof of concepts" out there.

Thank you, I am fucking sick of hearing about the cloud when we've seen no viable beneficial application of it to date. Crackdown 3's multiplayer is supposedly cloud based, and it's not impressive. There's nothing about it that couldn't be run off hardware... probably better. An omega-level downgrade of what it was originally touted to be. This is yet ANOTHER gen where people are talking up cloud applications as being a huge boon to MS gaming.

This is why people who aren't totally dyed-in-the-wool X-goons continue to roll their eyes at Xbox. all this hype of features and functions that never seem to pan out... ever. It's a depressing cycle that never ends. It wouldn't happen as often if people called them out on it.

@daniel_su123: Sure lol.

Initially I believe Cloud Gaming will be for people who either don't want to spend money on a Console or want to play the games they own on phones and Tablets. I imagine adoption will be slow but will eventually Snowball and get increasingly more Popular each year.

Apparently MS is trying to get the jump on their competitors with this one. That is why you have Game Pass and the Massive Expansion of 1st Party Studios by the Xbox Division. If MS is taking gaming seriously they will probably continue their Expansion of 1st Party to make it so that an Xbox Stream device and Game Pass is all you'll ever need for Gaming.

Sony already has PS Now but doesn't have the huge Cloud infrastructure to make this work on a Massive Scale. Of Course Sony could just Partner with MS, Amazon or Google at an additional cost, while they expand their Server infrastructure and they would be fine.

All 3 of them are now competing with Sony on game distribution so doubt they will help a competitor. Then again Microsoft did step up and help Sony when they had that big North Korean hack.

That being said. There are news articles in the last couple days That Sony is teaming up with Verizon. And they are already testing/teasing games like God Of War, Detroit, and others to be played across different devices.

Never seen the Cloud working? Titanfall 1 has amazing Multiplayer thanks to it and big reason why 2's MP sucked. That was over 5 years ago.

*Fanboy remark-Sell that PS4 no need for it anymore! No more exclusives! (Just kidding if it is not obvious. Just a little taste of your own medicine for some of you)

As far as I know MS is definitely one of the leading cloud companies. Personally I have little interest in cloud gaming, but I already got what I wanted from their cloud services because of the dedicated server support on all 1st party multiplayer games....as someone who games a lot online with their 1st party titles, I love that stuff. And the seamless save synching is great too.

I guess one thing I would like to see more moving forward is more partnerships like they used to have before with games like Sunset Overdrive and Titanfall, those were not 1st part titles but they still used the cloud for their online components. For example I would have liked the game "Killer Instinct" to have cloud support, particularly since it is a fighting title and consistently fast pings would have been awesome with this game. They could have included the P2P option as an alternative in case you live in an area where you don't get great connections to their cloud.

The cloud will save Xbox! DX12 will save Xbox! Kinect 2.0 is the future!! UI redesign #23 will be just as fast as ps4’s!

The above is why the majority of gamers and gaming professionals hate xboners

Hello alt-boy, so what you are saying is after only 2 days, you're a System Wars expert? :)

I guess you didn't prepare your defenses enough to realize people were going to catch onto you being an alt right away.

@jaydan: reread what I said.

Myself and others have already read your posts. What's your point? What I see is you are a hypocrite of your own words. You're telling people to stay on-topic yet you make posts off-topic.

Try harder. You are officially labeled an alt around here.

i was pondering something about this..kinda related.

ok lets say MS, sony and nintendo decide no more consoles: just streaming. if im EA whats to stop me from doing my own and shifting all my popular MP games to my own service? i already have origin which is my own distribution and Mp services platform...not too far off. why would i continue to make games to run on xbox and PS streaming services and have sony and MS take a chunk of money?

at the moment it makes sense for the likes of EA to work with MS and co to release games on a console. Designing, building and supporting a console is an expensive and time consuming affair. but if they are not doing that anymore then why would i (as EA and co) give them money?

could the big 3 be shooting themselves in the foot by pursuing streaming?

anywho as for sony: i wouldnt be too worried. they have the tech and knowhow to deliver a streaming service. if it does become a hit they can quickly ramp up. the barriers for entry to do that is not as high considering where sony are currently positioned.

With the cloud computing stuff yes, Crackdown 3 Wrecking Zone looks like a nice showcase for handling the destruction so that whatever your gaming on the experience will be the same. MS will def have a nice asset with implementing cloud computing in future games and expand upon what Crackdown 3 is doing. Everyone seems to be raving about wrecking zone and the cloud tech handling the destruction.

Although Sony might be behind, EA has Project Atlas and in press mentioned they would be licensing it out to developers, So Sony has a option until they can catch up to MS.

Yes Project Atlas! That's what Crackdown 3 was initially using before EA bought them and Xbox decided to create their own. Hence the Crackdown 3 delays. Project Atlas must not be cheap, if they decided to build their own.

Power of the cloud is real, is coming and we will see it soon. I don't think it will cost us anything if they use the consoles as cloud computing while not in use. They can monetize the consoles on the cloud. After hearing this it blew my mind too.

The thing is MS has found a way to monetize this without costing gamers any more than they are already paying. Skip to 6 minutes in

This is not a random. He has leaked and predicted many things that have been proven to be true.

@the-a-baum: Yep, like I said, the next 10+ years is going to be very interesting.

Sony could be totally left behind.

I’m debating whether to wade into this conversation and explain how this stuff works on the back end. I’m a sys admin who actually had migrated much of my orgs core infrastructure to the “cloud” and specifically to Microsoft Azure. That said, knowing the actually “power” of the cloud I was an Onlive subscriber when it first launched and have had a continuous PSNow subscription since its inception. I’ve betaed Googles cloud gaming service. Further I actually was a advocate for the unreleased vapor ware Phantom console and the had a GameTap subscription since inception til death. I’ll probably one of the most “Cloud” gaming experienced people you will ever meet.

All this credentials aside I will say Sony is by far and away better prepared than any of the competitors. If you want a more in-depth analysis or want my opinion any of these just ask me.

Hint, Sony scoped up both Onlive and Gankai, two of the most successful and commercially viable cloud services ever to exist. (Not saying much) but the have years of not only developing the tech, but also actually monetizing the service. They have a commercial product right now and have had it for years.

It's sad when people has to hope and root for the competition to fail.

LOL lemmings still think “Teh Powar of the cloud” will save them.

You have been talking about the cloud for years now.

Nothing has changed.

No games and Crackdown 3 is an incoming massive flop which was supposed to use Cloud power.

Lemmings have their heads stuck in the clouds while the rest of us are on Earth playing games.

I'd like to see a reply to this post for people who have been claiming the opposite.

I mean, I was wondering why people were saying Sony was behind with cloud services when they're literally the only company now actually using a cloud based service on a world wide scale, yet somehow people claim Sony's behind MS who doesn't have anything close?

How is he an alt the dude just started here I mean we don't know if hes an alt

@ajstyles: Not sure if you're aware but Crackdown 3 Wrecking Zone is using the cloudgine tech that was recently purchased by Epic. So the cloud computing is there as was promised from the get go.

Crackdown 3 will most likely be an average game but from events/reviews, the cloud computing handling wrecking zone destruction works.

@ProtossRushX: Another high quality post. 10/10

Crackdown 3's destruction/

- is there as promised from the get go

or

- destruction works

pick one!

FYI: Simply working isn't what was promised bud, keep it a buck.

@the-a-baum: Crackdown 3 is using Cloudgine which was purchased by Epic. Project Atlas is EA and nothing to do with Crackdown 3.

Most people thought after Epic purchased Cloudgine that MS scrapped it but they didnt. There was an article that came out around Gamescom which the devs talk about it all.

@boxrekt: cloud computed destruction was promised and people reviewed Wrecking Zone after Gamescom and The XO event in November. The Multiplayer preview was even played on public servers of xbox live so it wasnt sugar coated. It works and all the major publications were impressed with it.

The multiplayer maps are fully destructible as was promised from the beginning, ive been following the game from scratch. The only thing they changed was the multiplayer mode isnt the tower defense in which teams were in charge of destroying the opposing teams agency tower.

I'll reply to the first post, and then come back to yours.

In the scenario mentioned above, EA could very well just stop supporting all other platforms, and just release on their own. The companys who choose to still release their games across all platforms will outperform EA though, because for companies like EA, Ubi, and Activision it's all about how many games they sell.

Secondly. People say that Sony is behind with cloud services, because Sony currently has zero cloud services. It's really not a difficult observation to make. Amazon and MS have the largest cloud services, followed by Google. Sony uses a cloud service such as Amazons AWS, marks up the price, and then let's you stream games with it. PSNow simply doesn't work without companies like MS, Amazon, and Google supplying the so called "cloud".

Over the last few years, it has been beneficial for those companies to provide the cloud infrastructure to Sony for a price. Going forward, all these companies have announced that they will be creating their own streaming services for games. At that point they will be directly competing with Sony’s PSNow. At some point, it no longer becomes worth it for them continue to rent Sony those servers. They might, but they will drastically increase the price in order to force Sony to price itself out of the market. Even at that, they will hamstring Sony's streaming in order to compare favorably to their own.

These things happen all the time in business. If you want a somewhat comparable example, look at Fortnite vs PUBG. Fortnite allowed Bluehole to develop PUBG on their Unreal engine. As soon as they got it up and running, Epic created Fortnite BR in a matter of months. They used all the tips and tricks that Bluehole had. Since it was Epics engine, they then went even further with their in and out knowledge of it, and made their product buttery smooth and bug free compared to PUBG. It's not an exact 1 to 1 example, but it's close enough to illustrate how companies will work with you, and help you out... UntIl they want to compete in that space as well. They then leverage all that to squash you.

@babyjoker1221:

Unfortunately much of what is written here is qualitatively false. As with any streaming service the question of distribution becomes vs production becomes a economic issue. I.e it’s why we have Hulu, Netflix, Starz, Amazon Prime etc. content developers license their products to this distributors. Yes they could go the way Disney did and start their own service but the capital necessary just doesn’t exist or doesn’t shake out financially vs licensing their content on distribution channels. It’s no different than any other streaming service.

Second the idea that Sony has ZERO cloud infrastructure is patently false, especially when we know PS3 PSNow games run on customer build Cell, PS3 blades specially designed for this which enables PS3 and back compatibility for ALL games. They literally have the infrastructure, hardware, designed, built and running which would replicate every game they have ever made right now. Further the merits of whether they would part with AWS, Azure, etc. are of little concern. They spent $380 million on purchasing Gaikai, I’d they wanted to expand immediately they could swope up a smaller server farm for half that. The most likely scenario is that Sony goes with Amazon, who has already paired with AMD for server hardware. This also places Sony and Amazon at a greater advantage. Sony helps subsidize Amazons AMD farms with PSNow subs while Amazon can sell their own service as another option. In either case both parties make our well in this scenario except for MS whose Azure backbone primarily consists of Intel/Nvidia. Cloud gaming is neither costless nor wholly 1-1 especially in the highly very likely chance Xbone cloud games will be running on different hardware than their console counterparts. We haven’t even proached the subject of full compatibility if that’s even possible at this point.

Lmfaoooo shut the hell up alty. Everyone knew what you were trying to pull.

XCloud is basically a normal Xbox Console in a server rack. Amazon realistically don't need Sony for anything. The only thing that Sony has is content, but a company as the size of Amazon can easily make up for that gap by buying publishers and studios.

Sony and Nintendo don’t need the cloud. You can’t fix what ain’t broke with cloud computing. They’ll continue to dominate with traditional consoles for years to come

@michaelmikado: Just to point a few things with your post.

Sony has zero presence in cloud services. The PS3 hardware for the blade racks aren't even in Sony's farms. They're in both AWS, and Rackspace farms. Trying to imply that Sony does have a presence in cloud services is a false narrative.

You're assertion that AWS just uses AMD, while Azure uses Intel/Nvidia is also absurd, and that's not how it works anyway. If you're trying to say that AWS uses AMD, and Azure uses only Nvidia, so Sony has the upper hand, you have no idea how any of this works.

Finally. Yes Sony uses AWS now. Amazon is going to launch its own game streaming service. At some point it behooves them to leverage their resources against their competitors. If Amazon was looking to sign some big contract with Sony, we probably wouldn't be hearing about Sony trying to partner with Verizon.

Yeah, I have no idea what he's talking about. Any server farm has agnostic hardware and software in order to be used as widely as possible. Azure infrastructure has more AMD hardware than Nvidia. At least from what I've seen on their racks. Probably due to cost. Not that it matters anyway, as it wouldn't really make any kind of difference anyway.

Your second point is also correct. Amazon can do what Sony does here. Sony can't do what Amazon does. At some point, it will benefit Amazon to take marketshare from Sony.

Phony and Nintendont are Doomed. Eh, but most already knew that. :P

Any idiot would know CNBC has a huge bias towards american products (for obvious reasons), its been like this since forever. This article is pure shit

And the hits just keep comin...

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-studio-teases-new-microsoft-technologies/1100-6464372/

S&N are doomed, doomed I tellz ya. :P

Proof that size of the cloud mean total shit.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/910895/us-most-popular-video-streaming-services-by-reach/

Oh look amazon is not even close to Netflix or Hulu yet has bigger cloud.

The best thing about this is that Sony as of now has a bigger client base and years of streaming games on its services vs MS but somehow sony is behind..

Hahahahaaa

@daniel_su123:

Again you are just factually wrong. The bulk of Azure and really most cloud services are Nvida Grid/Tesla. Most of Azure are general purpose CPUs, you CANNOT (technically you can) emulate high performance GPUs just by throwing more VM nodes at it. That's the point! I won't even debate you, I'll just link to Microsoft's own info on their GPU racks because I source my info.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/sizes-gpu

That's MS own info on their Azure GPU infrastructure. Have you EVER actually tried to play a game on Azure servers? Unless you have their N series Nvida servers you aren't getting it to run well. Microsoft does use AMD but NOT for GPU which is a huge difference. GPU resources are NOT cloud agnostic, it doesn't work that way. You can get it away with it on x86 arc but cloud GPU is a completely different ballgame.

So far AWS is the largest cloud service committed to AMD cloud GPU where MS has not.

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/09/introducing-amazon-appstream-2-graphics-design-a-new-lower-cost-instance-type-for-streaming-graphics-applications/

Anyway, what this boils down to is that MS has really a few options: 1) Build for Xbox/AMD first and then retool or use the PC version for their cloud service. 2) Build for PC and cloud first with Intel/Nvidia as lead and then retool for Xbox AMD. 3) Make the next Xbox an Intel/Nvidia box for consistency through its Azure platform and ease of development.

Trying to act as if Sony doesn't have cloud partnerships or built up infrastructure is ludicrous. They have hundreds if not thousands of server VMs ready NOW and working. There will ALWAYS be other server farms they can migrate to, acquire, or even flat-out buy provided they have the cloud GPU infrastructure. Attempting to place value in SOLELY the physical server farms shows a lack of understanding of cloud services. They have their own servers and they have active working production VMs. It doesn't matter if its on AWS or Azure or Rackspace or anywhere else.

Further how is Sony attempting to partner with Verizon indicative of them not having a contract with Amazon?? That doesn't even make sense. Sony's servers can run on anyone's cloud service if the infrastructure meets their requirements. If anything, having redundancy among multiple cloud service providers places them in a better position if you know anything at all about disaster recovery. You can debate cost all you like, but even lower costs gets expensive when you lack the revenue. This is why AWS and Sony work. Cloud GPU is expensive and has a small user base, Sony using AWS helps subsidize Amazon's cloud GPU initiatives. Amazon can still offer their own service for those who don't use Sony/PlayStation and still keep their cost down because they have two different services using the same or similar hardware nodes they invested in. Wasted CPU/GPU cycles cost money for cloud providers. That's what Amazon gets out of the deal, even with their own service, Sony basically pays part or much of the cost of their cloud GPU service while Amazon also uses them to support their own without having to worry about profitability of that service. It's just cloud economics, and the same way Azure or anybody else's business model works.

At the end of the day, acting like MS has 1000s of Xbox VMs ready to go is nothing more than speculation. We know for a fact, from publicly released data from MS themselves that their Azure infrastructure runs on Nvida for GPU cloud processing. You can't just take Xbox One AMD code through it on an emulator and expect high level performance. (You technically code, but the resources required to emulate it wouldn't be worth it vs running the PC version of it.) There's ALOT more to cloud gaming than spinning up general purpose VMs.

Your Comment is beyond Stupid. Xbox makes Billions of Dollars every year for MS.

Xbox does not need Saving.

@EG101: Define: "make"

@babyjoker1221: but we are talking a scenario where there are no consoles.

as ea my choice is

1) continue to put my games on PSN/live, pay money and develop my game for at least 2 platforms that then hook into my origin back end (which i already have)

2) just develop my games for origin on my own servers (which i already have though i would need more) and make the service available on everything: PC, TVs, streaming box, various browsers, android, ios....whatever. want to play EAs latest and greatest.....play it on one of those instead.

multiplat makes sense in the current market of course. but would it make sense for the major players if MS, sony and nintendo were just offering a streaming platform to 3rd parties?

i could easily see a struggle like we are seeing in the movie/TV streaming space. netflix has the infrastructure. everyone else has the content. the major players dont want to pay netflix. they want, and can afford, their own service.

I see some problems with this silly argument you are trying to push.

1-Cloud are not just for 1 purpose Amazon,and google i am sure will not suddenly stop doing busyness with companies just because they have interest in a particular market.

That like saying Google will stop licensing android to phone makers because they own motorola.

Dude titanfall use of the cloud is for AI not for game streaming,basically the cloud was running some AI which wasn't even latency sensitive to begin with,the rest was just normal online play as you will find on any platform with dedicated servers,hell how in hell you think sony ran Resistance 1 and 2 40 and 60 players at once?

You know the money they make when they sell you one revenues..Hahahahahaa

Yet PS Now is currently the top streaming service. Eventhough the overall market is small.

I personally hope gaming never goes exclusively to streaming.

A lot of Babybackballbagbullshit up in here

Gotta love when sources contradicts themselves.

Make as in Profit.

@tormentos said:

Proof that size of the cloud mean total shit.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/910895/us-most-popular-video-streaming-services-by-reach/

Oh look amazon is not even close to Netflix or Hulu yet has bigger cloud.

The best thing about this is that Sony as of now has a bigger client base and years of streaming games on its services vs MS but somehow sony is behind..

Hahahahaaa

Streaming games vs video is much more complicated that what you are suggesting. Being the biggest cloud player with the most server farms is much more important than videos. Cloud games can't have stuttering or buffering in the middle of the game, games have to be stream and inputed in real-time, you also need custom server racks. Videos don't have this problem. The fundamental fact is the more server farms you have, the better positioned you are to scale your cloud gaming service.

Online, PSNow are much more similar to Blackberry/Windows Mobile in technological terms, they are the first in the market, however the solution isn't good. Project Stream, XCloud and Amazon Cloud gaming are more similar to Netflix/iPhone.

@tormentos said:

Proof that size of the cloud mean total shit.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/910895/us-most-popular-video-streaming-services-by-reach/

Oh look amazon is not even close to Netflix or Hulu yet has bigger cloud.

The best thing about this is that Sony as of now has a bigger client base and years of streaming games on its services vs MS but somehow sony is behind..

Hahahahaaa

That's the dumbest comparison i've seen. Those are video streaming services... Literally, entire server farms processing something completely different from the point you're trying to make. The "cloud" offers more than video streaming.

@lundy86_4: @daniel_su123:

You guys are making the same argument as the person you are quoting but in reverse. Of course video streaming requires different hardware requirements than general processing, however the same is true for cloud gaming. Just because Amazon or MS or Google have a ton of cloud GP(general purpose) servers doesn’t immediately mean they have cloud GPU resources necessary for this online gaming.

As I’ve already pointed out MS has some but they are primarily NVIDIA cloud GPUs. AWS has the most AMD cloud GPUs of all the cloud providers.

The cloud isn’t some nebulous group of servers that can suddenly run any code you throw at it 100x faster. It’s likely similar to the server nodes your job runs just multiplied by thousands. It doesn’t mean you can just install FarCry on a cloud VM and it runs like it’s on a discrete GPU.

The comparison of Netflix to cloud providers may be silly but it’s the same as claiming Amazon has some kind of advantage argument that Hulu or Netflix would lose to Google and Amazon in video distribution services because they don’t have their own servers. And we won’t even begin to talk about how “well” Microsoft’s store and distribution of apps, music, games, ebooks ,etc. is doing despite having PC market share and the infrastructure to support it far far far beyond more any other entity. It’s a stupid argument by people who don’t understand cloud services. You can get any cloud provider provided they meet your specifications for server nodes, in a cloud enterprise it’s always going to be about the service itself that sets it apart.

@lundy86_4: @daniel_su123:

1-My argument is based on the fact that having something big or having tons of cash doesn't warranty success not the content run.

2-I damn well know what a cloud is what it can do and how game streaming differ from movie streaming,i have argue about it myself tons of times specially when MS try to claim their cloud would magically make xbox one stronger.

3-MS cloud is not even completely for games,azure it self is a cloud for multiple purposes many non game related so you people should stop acting as if azure was just for games,sony doesn't need a cloud every bit as big as MS one.

4-Sony is a multi billion dollar company a year who already not only stream movies and TV shows but also games,so if they very well capable of constructing one.

5-Again how many games MS is streaming on this moment from its clouds? Yeah sony is streaming 100's in fact PS Now has more games than game pass,so yeah not only sony can compete they are ahead of MS by some years in the streaming market.

Just because MS has a huge cloud doesn't mean they will beat sony in anyway,that is no different than the believe that MS billions would win them the console market which for years have fail to materialize.

Please point of to those profits you know xbox profits not MS division which also houses windows and other product that carry the xbox one its back.

Microsoft has cloud GpGPU distributive services instead.