No, I'm saying MS is making Xbox games. They have two options. They make an Xbox in the cloud or they run a PC version in the cloud which would be compatible with NVidia Grid. They decided to literally stick Xboxes in a blade and stick them in a data center. The problem with that, as I pointed out above is that a configuration like that isn't inherently scalable like an MxGPU solution would be. That would be the idea situation where instead of emulating the entire console, OS and all in the cloud like PSnow did in the early days, you instead emulate just the game part and allocate available resources based on the demand of the game rather than emulating the entire console and essentially using remote desktop to access it. Basically the old solution for Sony and PSnow would be like Netflix creating VMs for users to connect to, open a web browser and watch movies. MS seems to have adopted this model like Sony did 5 years ago which sticking console parts in blade servers.

The reason AMD gpus are important are due to compatibility for games. Of course you can run game streaming in Nvidia Grid, what do you think the other providers are using. The difference is they are running PC games which are built around being compatible with Nvidia games. PS and XB games are designed to run on AMD APIs on a low-level. To get it to run on Nvidia grid you would first have to emulate AMD GPUs which, if its even possible wouldn't be worth the effort or cost. Such to the point that MS would rather build custom servers than attempting to run these games on their existing cloud infrastructure. That was always the point I made from the very beginning and even without knowing about the hardware I made the right point just judging from that business decision from MS.

As far as owning infrastructure, I already pointed out the difference in the above post but I will try to lay it out better:

AWS which Sony partners with, has partnered with AMD for cloud MxGPU blades. These are specific hardware configurations designed to allow you to dynamically allocate cloud GPU resources.

What this means is that your cloud game VM and resources are completely scalable. Because these MxGPUs are AMD based, which both the XB1 and PS4 are. They have high low-level api compatibility. Attempting to run these on Nvidia Grid would require a significant amount of processing overhead to the point where it would 1) not work at all. or 2) require so much overhead that you would be better off replacing or buying new AMD hardware which is EXACTLY what MS did. The other option would have been to run PC versions of the game which MS still might do at a latter time.

The reason Sony has an advantage is because their games are not tied to specific custom servers. Any datacenter that has V340 nodes would be able to run PSNow games. Sony isn't tied to just one specific service provider. Amazon just happens to be the biggest with MxGPU partnership with AMD so it works out mutually. In this scenario, Sony through it's service actually subsidizes the cost of these servers. In theory this would also allow Amazon the opportunity to piggyback off any of these cloud servers for its own games instances. Such as when users want to play an instance of bejeweled, or Crossy Roads, or any other low requirement game. But, again as I said, because Sony would be able to spin up PSnow servers or any datacenter running V340s, they wouldn't have to wait for custom servers to be built and they aren't totally dependent on a single service provider. It's just basic cloud disaster recovery advantages. Your obscuring the specifics of the scenarios.

I'll just recap my points:

You can't just run these games on whatever servers you have lying around in your datacenters.

You need AMD based server GPUs for low-level api compatibility for both XB1 and PS4 games

Your only choices are to partner with someone who has a ton of cloud AMD MxGPUs or buy them.

MS doesn't have them so they need to either buy them or partner with someone. They choose to buy/build custom ones.

Sony is building their service around off the shelf v340 MxGPUs, it means any datacenter and provider who has them can run their service and they don't need custom parts or specific providers.

Sony may pay a premium to use it, but it also means their operation is completely scalable based on usage. Further they can scale the resources dedicated to individual users for more demanding games and technically offer game experiences beyond what they could offer even PS5 home console users. They aren't on the hook, out of pocket for building up custom server racks that no one uses and can scale with other providers based on demand.

This man gets it!!!

Why do you keep quoting the specs of an X1X dev kit?? That means absolutely nothing in cloud computing beyond the fact that they are able to emulate them in software which is a given with any dev kit.

I also don't understand the comparison to the PS4 Pro design?

From the very video you posted the xCloud blades appear to be 4 XB1s in blade configuration. That's the heart of the issue! As I already stated MS only had a few options, one of them being to buy up AMD hardware and stick them in their datacenters. It looks like that's exactly what they are doing except they are doing what Sony ALREADY did and abandoned 5 years ago to the day. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-sony-creates-custom-ps3-for-playstation-now

"Sony has developed brand new PS3 hardware to power its PlayStation Now streaming service, revealed earlier this month at CES in Las Vegas. Sources who have been briefed on the project suggest that the new PlayStation 3 consists of eight custom console units built into a single rack server. It's the new PlayStation hardware that everyone will have access to, but few will actually see."

The problem with this configuration, which Sony soon realized, is that you are essentially running a remote console which has little benefit. You aren't effectively taking advantage of the cloud properly and why Sony dropped support for many devices when it moved to its modern method of PSNOW. Rather than emulating the entire console, local OS features remain local and the cloud servers actually emulate the "game" part of the games rather than creating a VM instance of an entire console. This frees up resources and allows dynamically allocated cloud CPU/GPU resources. Effectively what it means is that rather than taking the entirely of a CPU, the games can use only the processing cycles it needs to run the game rather than emulate the entire console. Thus in theory less demanding games would require less shared resources and allow more of those games to run on a given node.

This is all part of AMD's and AWS's MxGPU (Multi-user GPU) strategy. Currently Amazon has AMD FirePro™ S7150x2 GPUs (7.2 TFlops) and recently began upgrading to V340s!!!! For reference V340s are dual Vega 10, 56cus for a grand total of 112cus and 32GB HMB2!!!!!!!! We are talking 21+TFlop GPUs with over a 1TB of bandwidth. That's how you build a cloud gaming infrastructure. The advantage to something like this is that while they could theoretically run 12 PS4 on a single card easily (or 20 XB1s). They could also just as easily drop a PS4 Pro or even emulate proposed PS5 hardware in that environment.

Sony, right now. Today, no caveats or ifs. Could drop a PS5 beta game running on an PS5 dev kit emulator on an AWS server and have PSnow players beta-ing PS5 games because their hardware infrastructure moved away from dropping hardware into servers to being hardware agnostic as long as there are enough low-level similarities for the game to be playable on with minimum emulation.

Basically to recap so we are clear. No we don't know exactly where MS is in developing their VM software, however they taking the EXACT same steps Sony did 5 years ago in 2014 or putting custom blades which emulate the console 1-1. Essentially remote consoles. The PSNow model has since moved to a more MxGPU based environment which is why we are seeing so many PS3 Psnow games getting upgraded to the PS4 version. It is simply more cost effective to run this way. To be clear, I am not saying MS cannot catch up, but they are far far far behind in their implementation. They are still at the point with PSnow was 5 years ago where they were relying on custom built "consoles in the cloud" rather than true cloud MxGPU or Grid GPU processing.

Microsoft's virtualization is superb, there's no question on that. But their Azure infrastructure isn't build around racks of Vega 64s. You can't emulate high level GPU resources on Intel Xeon blades or even Epyc servers. They have specialized Tesla and K series from Nvida for that and have yet to partner with AMD on cloud GPU. So you are now in a situation where they either buy up a ton of AMD cloud GPU servers to maximum compatibility and emulation for current Xbox games or your cloud versions of future Xbox games are all PC based and you no longer have low level hardware parity between your cloud and Xbox versions of the game. The other alternative would be to go Intel/Nvidia for the Xbox. The point is using an x86/AMD dev kit to emulate …. x86/AMD is barely emulation. Its the same underlying architecture. The challenge is for MS to release a "powerful" Xbox and then have parity for its cloud alternative while addressing any disparities in underlying architecture which so far everyone has been conveniently ignoring.

@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.

@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.

@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.

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.

OMG no! These two methods seem like the worse possible way to handle this process.

In the Kahawai method, it essential renders a low rez game and overlays it with a high rez layer rendered on a remote server. This is fine for mobile games, which it seems to be aiming for, but falls flat with the level of interactivity and physics we would expect from next gen games. When we are talking modern games we have high complexity models which dynamic physics. Here's a good article on garbage hitboxes and why they ruin gameplay. A good hitbox will match the character poly model as closely as possible, unless for some specific design purpose. Objects will (should) interact in accordance with what you see on screen.

We already have that same complaint in recent Farcry comparisons where the environments and physics are garbage.

https://www.dsogaming.com/articles/far-cry-2-features-more-advanced-physics-than-far-cry-5-despite-being-released-10-years-ago/

Putting a mobile game with a HD wrapper will only exasperate the problem:

Now Outatime's solution seems to understand that attempting to split development or reduce the complexity of a game and throw lipstick on a pig isn't the best game development model (although viable in today's market.) Rather, their solution is to keep the tradition means of development, but replicate possible next frame scenarios multiple times in the cloud and present the correct frame based on user input. While recognizing you cannot necessarily split the processing for gameplay, the resources it would require to render games would be whatever the system would present X4. One for each of what it claims would be the for possible predicted frames. It does address incorrect predictions, but it seems like that would be a problem in particular manic games and in effective.

My opinion on split and local processing:

The best uses of split/cloud processing (IMO) would be to utilize a high performance system for rendering high level physics and calculations based on the proximity of objects to the user.

I.e. fully rendered user player and most of the scene surrounding that user. Rasterization could be used on dynamic objects in close proximity and I would say cloud based ray-tracing would be more suited for distant and non-dynamic elements. MS seemed to try to do that with the Xbox but it didn't appear that their tools were fleshed out enough to make it viable.

Here's a good intel article on cloud ray-tracing that they showed off over 10 years ago:

https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/m/d/4/1/d/8/Cloud-based_Ray_Tracing_0211.pdf

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/tracing-rays-through-the-cloud/

Nintendo has less than 5 more years as a home console manufacturer.

The n-gage also deserves honorable mention as does the Nomad.