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Author Topic: Microsoft Builds A Mountain On The Farm To Beat Sony  (Read 474 times)

garyopa

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Microsoft Builds A Mountain On The Farm To Beat Sony
« on: June 24, 2013, 08:20:00 AM »

Microsoft is still thinking that their 'Cloud-Power' will make XB1 beat the PS4

So much so, they are investing close to $1 Billion dollars (plus some nice tax credits also) to build what is being called 'Project Mountain' over in Iowa, home of their XBOX ONE Cloud Data Center

(IMG:http://www.maxconsole.com/maxconsole/contents/RKSID00000000000000001047/icon_xl.jpg)


Microsoft has of course recently backtracked on their DRM, but they are still aiming towards making the XB1 'Cloud-Power' with games like TitanFall and Forza 5 already stated they need the Cloud of 300,000 servers to make your gaming experience amazing, more then what the lonely 360 can ever do, and you have heard the statements for ever XB1, there is 3 more in Cloud waiting for you, and with the Cloud it makes the XB1 10x more powerful then the 360, and this is going to be marketed more and more by Microsoft as they take aim at Sony to try to win this next-gen console war, and in doing so they are also spending a ton of money close to $1 Billion bucks!

QUOTE

Microsoft is counting on what it's calling "Project Mountain" to help Xbox One beat PS4 from Sony.  Project Mountain is a massive data center to be based in West Des Moines, Iowa.  The Des Moines Register  reports that the Iowa Economic Development Authority Board has approved $20 million in tax credits for Project Mountain.  Microsoft will initially invest $700 million in Project Mountain and later on push it to $1 billion.  Christian Belady of Microsoft said, "The expansion supports the growing demand for Microsoft's cloud services." The project represents "our latest in efficient data center thinking."

Microsoft had earlier said that Xbox One would be supported by more than 300,000 cloud servers.  Now we know that these cloud servers are part of Project Mountain.

Parts of Microsoft's strategy can be gleaned by an interview with Matt Booty, General Manager of Redmond Game Studios, published in Ars Technica.  Booty said, "Things that I would call latency-sensitive would be reactions to animations in a shooter, reactions to hits and shots in a racing game, reactions to collisions. Those things you need to have happen immediately and on frame and in sync with your controller. There are some things in a video game world, though, that don't necessarily need to be updated every frame or don't change that much in reaction to what's going on."


Of course this means even tho the XB1 no longer 'needs internet to play games', if they push this Cloud on most game titles, you will still be connected 24/7 while you playing them, and what about 'lag' as the servers are all in one place, what if you gaming from Aussie-Land, or if there is not enough servers available for new 'hot title', or launch problems like SimCity, will Microsoft massive amount of dollars be able to solve all these problems that normally come with Cloud-Powered apps!

NEWS SOURCE #1: Microsoft builds a mountain on the farm to beat Sony (via) Forbes

NEWS SOURCE #2: Microsoft Builds A Mountain On The Farm To Beat Sony (via) 360Crunch
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Zod5000

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Microsoft Builds A Mountain On The Farm To Beat Sony
« Reply #1 on: June 24, 2013, 01:52:00 PM »

It sounds like a pipe dream of microsoft's to me?  Latency is a big issue, so I'm not sure what aspects of computing can be farmed out done via "The Cloud".  

I'm also wondering (if they can pull it off?) how much bandwidth would it use up?  More and more ISPs are putting in caps.  Would this have a significant impact?

My guess is the cloud thing will have a minimal impact?
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relaxxx

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Microsoft Builds A Mountain On The Farm To Beat Sony
« Reply #2 on: June 24, 2013, 02:11:00 PM »

It just seems retarded to me, to spend $500 on an 8 core machine to play cloud processed games. All they need to do is put a tiny Rockchip cell phone processor inside the kinect bar with a wifi, controller receiver, HDMI out and sell it as "kinect live" that eliminates the entire Xbone box. Sell it for below cost for like $60 because you're going to make it back with online purchases. Aside from Kinect sensor games, why limit your game streaming services to just Xbones? offer it on any stinking device that can receive an HD video stream; tables, ipads, phones, PC's, Xbox360's, even PS4's and PS3's... why the hell not?

This post has been edited by relaxxx: Jun 24 2013, 09:22 PM
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Psyfer9983

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Microsoft Builds A Mountain On The Farm To Beat Sony
« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2013, 02:19:00 PM »

I still don't think that this "Cloud-Power" will work. I'm also looking at this from another angle. If I were making a console, it would be independent from outside processing as in this "Cloud-Power". I don't see the bandwidth just to use something like this. You would have to have a an internet connection that could handle this let alone the processing power needed to process the data packets if they are using compression. This may work for games that are not based on real-time, but the majority of games that are being made are real-time. Its like MS made a "power house console" that still needs more power to function properly that only they supply. This tells me that they are wanting control of how you use and play the console that YOU paid for.

This reminds me of the mainframe days where we had a PC terminal that could function but needs the server to tell how to. Sure, you can boot the terminal with a boot disk, but certain features you wanted to use required connection to the server. And if the server was over loaded, like someone at the server doing whatever, everybody was bottle-necked until server load was reduced. Most of the time if the terminal was slow, it was due to too many connects at once or not enough bandwidth to handle the network traffic.

I could be wrong, but I hope that MS tested this before release. Though that hasn't stopped them before....

QUOTE(Zod5000 @ Jun 24 2013, 02:52 PM) *

It sounds like a pipe dream of microsoft's to me?  Latency is a big issue, so I'm not sure what aspects of computing can be farmed out done via "The Cloud".  

I'm also wondering (if they can pull it off?) how much bandwidth would it use up?  More and more ISPs are putting in caps.  Would this have a significant impact?

My guess is the cloud thing will have a minimal impact?


I agree with you on this. Every ISP with 100 mile of my house has a cap on the bandwidth. Luckily, I signed up before my current ISP did this.
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ca102455

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Microsoft Builds A Mountain On The Farm To Beat Sony
« Reply #4 on: June 25, 2013, 01:09:00 PM »

Latency is key & with servers located in Iowa & me based in England this wont be any use to me...
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gamesquest1

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Microsoft Builds A Mountain On The Farm To Beat Sony
« Reply #5 on: June 27, 2013, 05:14:00 AM »

So these servers rant build yet, and the console is meant to be out this year, this is where the problem with all the rrod 360's came from (just throwing it all together a week before shipping with no sort of quality testing) also what's the bloody point in a new console if it's just streamed just sell another bs Kinect device and have done with (if they are so confident with their cloud capabilities)

Basically what this story should really say is, we need big servers to store all the info we grab from millions of Kinect devices in a nice safe and private place......... Oh yeah and we getting a government hand out to help us do it......wonder why?
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guily666

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Microsoft Builds A Mountain On The Farm To Beat Sony
« Reply #6 on: June 28, 2013, 06:44:00 PM »

Screw all of that, All I wanted was FREE ONLINE GAMING.

CLOUD here = DISABLED on everything. I'm tyred of everything going CLOUD (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grr.gif) .


Anyway, having 9999999999999 CLOUD SUPERCOMPUTER servers, mean NOTHING if there ain't gonna be good games.



ps: Come on M$, why you invest billions and not much games out there???  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grr.gif) . Going to stay with the 360 and probably buy games for the PC only to play a proper FREE ONLINE.
Keep Cool
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Kreten

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Microsoft Builds A Mountain On The Farm To Beat Sony
« Reply #7 on: October 11, 2013, 10:43:00 PM »

QUOTE(guily666 @ Jun 28 2013, 08:44 PM) *

Screw all of that, All I wanted was FREE ONLINE GAMING.

CLOUD here = DISABLED on everything. I'm tyred of everything going CLOUD (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grr.gif) .
Anyway, having 9999999999999 CLOUD SUPERCOMPUTER servers, mean NOTHING if there ain't gonna be good games.
ps: Come on M$, why you invest billions and not much games out there???  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grr.gif) . Going to stay with the 360 and probably buy games for the PC only to play a proper FREE ONLINE.
Keep Cool

Sound of true cheap skate.
Why do you think that xbox live is paid?
From reading around have you noticed anything regarding xbl online vs psn?
How about doing some research and seeing why XBL is paid and where does that money go to. Just know this over the lifetime of Xbox Media Group (including games acessories hardware xbl etc.) microsoft lost over Billion dollars. How about actually paying for High bandwidth lines for no to less lag? PCs get dedicated servers because it's cheap for game studios to set them up as there's a limited number of PC gamers ;-)


To thread poster how about researching a little and finding out that Microsoft owns many Data Centers which host Cloud Servers Azure they have more cloud servers in the world than Google. This was just an addition to an existing massive ecosystem of servers ;-)

You sound like you belong with PlayStation, just like they have same number of systems sold but only half the games sold on their system compared to on xbox.
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relaxxx

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Microsoft Builds A Mountain On The Farm To Beat Sony
« Reply #8 on: October 16, 2013, 08:21:00 AM »

LOL, "microsoft lost over billion dollars"?

Microsoft will bring in over 2.5 billion dollars from live subscriptions this year alone and probably over 3 billion next year.

Not one cent will ever be from me!
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