Crackdown 3 is more impressive than it seems.

[Κracus]

[youtube]d_nZ1xYyj6A[/youtube]

So apparently the entire city is destructable, every building has rooms in it. That... is impressive. They've apparently managed to share the computational load on external servers and require a 2 - 4MBPs connection which is very reasonable. Obviously this is the future of home console games upping the ante on the PC master race. Impressive stuff.

[MKJ]

was going to post this. X1 cloud computing in action.

also note that this is a tech demo, textures and assets are placeholders. (before anyone goes 'lol consoles, bland gfx!1).
The purpose of the demo is to show the potential of the X1 Cloud, not the game itself.

[Κracus]

I enjoyed the super powered nature of the previous games but after Crackdown 2 I wasn't really going to get 3 as it was just more of the same but I may have to check this out. Online hide and seek would be a lot of fun in a fully destructible world.

[syp0s]

That is quite incredible. Between this and that game at E3 with the dude in the red car and the grapple gun, the PS4/One seem to putting some serious distance between them and the previous generation.

[Κracus]

Grappling gun? You talking about Just Cause 3?

[Eraser]

It's all fun and games until someone at MS pulls the cloud-computing-plug.

[Κracus]

Yeah I was thinking that too, the game has a limited life span, at some point someone is going to say ok, these servers aren't worth it anymore.

Happened with Burnout Revenge

[syp0s]

It's all fun and games until someone at MS pulls the cloud-computing-plug.

Surely the concept of the cloud negates that, though?

[Eraser]

"Cloud" is a vague, not well defined term (other than the literal interpretation of clotted together vapor in the atmosphere, but that's not the sort of cloud we're talking about here). It's most often used as a drop-in term for a server that stores data online.

Regardless of what the technical infrastructure looks like, all servers that do this online processing for the game are owned and operated by Microsoft and possibly payed for in some kind of rental or lease contract by the developer or publisher of the game (which is basically a paying customer to MS). When either MS or that paying customer no longer feels like supporting the game, the services doing all the Crackdown computing are shut down and you won't be able to play Crackdown anymore.

Alternatively, consider the scenario where you're suffering an Internet outage and you cannot play your game anymore because it requires an online service to be available.

[xer0s]

I don't think I'll lose sleep over not being able to play a game once the majority of people stop playing and they turn the servers off. I'll play until I lose interest, just like always...

[MKJ]

Cloud service does not mean always online.

Also, X1's Cloud is a farm. It's not a per game service, so unless MS decides to kill their entire cloud (including their own Azure) the service will keep working.

Additionally features like this are possible locally, albeit in smaller fashion. When it can't connect for some reason it'll fallback to the downgraded version.
Consider it the equivalent of Quake3's LOD.

[Eraser]

Like I said, the infrastructure doesn't matter. When they stop the service that handles Crackdown computing then all their fancy physics and destruction shit stops working. This doesn't involve physically turning off servers. That much should be obvious.

As for a local, low detail fallback: yeah that's cute but you still get half the game you originally bought. And I fear this is a sliding scale. The next developer won't bother with a fallback because they say it's impossible without internet connection (cough, simcity, cough) and the third developer simulates 90% of the game in the cloud, sees revenue falls horribly in the first 6 months and pulls the plug a year later to make place for (and force customers into) the sequel.

Call me cynical but the current games industry is completely fucked in the head.

[SoM]

i want to see a 50mega nuke detonated in the middle of the city, but cloud would prolly crash

[MKJ]

As for a local, low detail fallback: yeah that's cute but you still get half the game you originally bought. .

You could say the same about Quake3, or 4. id doesnt even have their master servers up anymore. do you now expect a refund?

Besides the point, as you're still missing it.
There is no "Crackdown 3" service. It's not like EA's multiplayer servers. There's the Azure farm that provides an API. The API entails receiving calculations which then spits out the results. It doesn't matter who plugs into the API, be it Outlook.com, Crackdown, Forza or Xbox Live. There's no segmented services, it's all or nothing.
Seeing how XBL has been getting it's power from it for over 10+ years I don't think one has to be scared of it closing down anytime soon.

The whole digital rights is evil thing is largely moot anyway. People have no problems purchasing way over $60 worth of apps on their phones without worrying about the auth servers going down. When it's PC software it's suddenly the root of all evil.
(Again, this only goes for non-online only software.. always online games can get fucked in the face).

[MKJ]

Extremely important thing to note btw: this souped-up destruction thing is only in MP.
SP requires no cloud and uses the default destruction engine.

If there's no internet connection you won't MP anyway so you won't need the cloudcomputing.

[Κracus]

Exactly, complaining about the cloud being down and being unable to play the game shouldn't be an issue with this game as the destructable environments are supposedly MP only.

[Don Carlos]

I was going to post this too - looks like it could be fun. How will/does the cloud cope if 70,000 people online decide to blow a city up, though?

[Eraser]

You could say the same about Quake3, or 4. id doesnt even have their master servers up anymore. do you now expect a refund?

Not quite the same. Quake 3 or 4 can still be played in the exact same shape and form as it was playable in 1999. That the master servers aren't up doesn't prevent you from getting the exact same gameplay experience as before.

Besides the point, as you're still missing it.
There is no "Crackdown 3" service. It's not like EA's multiplayer servers. There's the Azure farm that provides an API. The API entails receiving calculations which then spits out the results. It doesn't matter who plugs into the API, be it Outlook.com, Crackdown, Forza or Xbox Live. There's no segmented services, it's all or nothing.

Ah well ok, that clears things up. I didn't know it was a generic "insert thing to calculate and we'll calculate it" thing (excuse my describing it in a really dumb ass way). That definitely adds to the longevity of this service. But still, when viewed in a longer scope, there will be a day when stuff stops working. API's or webservice interfaces are bound to change as well.
I can still put my 1990's Tetris cardridge in my Gameboy and play the game like I did 25 years ago. The same can't be said about Crackdown 25 years from now. That much I am sure of. If that really matters I do not know, but you do give up a bit of freedom and ownership with these online services. That 25 years might end up becoming 3 years after all, you just don't know.

[PhoeniX]

Same goes for Steam I guess. There may be a day where Steam disappears and people are set to lose hundreds if not thousands on their libraries :/.

[losCHUNK]

If they did that they should atleast make your catalogue DRM free and downloadable to your drive.