Gaming + Cloud technologies...
Read an interesting article tonight about a person who decided to go with the Xbox One based on the fact that the PS3 was such a huge success. The argument was basically that between the Xbox 360 and the PS3, it was the PS3 that had taken the gamble and added something radically new. Namely, their cell processor architecture. They acknowledged that it lent very little in the beginning, but gradually "grew up" over time to give the PS3 a serious advantage over the Xbox 360.
The argument is that the Xbox One has done that this generation, and the PS4 hasn't. And that differentiator with the Xbox One is that it is backed by Microsoft's cloud services.
I actually agree with this argument entirely. The Kinect sensor and the cloud integration are two ways in which the Xbox One can build out games to drastically out class Sony. I don't know in what ways it would manifest, but this generation of gaming is already bringing new ideas, and some of them do sort of meld with the cloud.
Multiplayer is evolving. One of the coolest ideas I've seen is the multiplayer in the upcoming Watch Dogs game, where the multiplayer is basically seamlessly integrated into the single player experience and you are either the hunter or the hunted. You don't wait in a lobby for a game, or find a friend to play with. Out of nowhere you may get a quest to either evade detection or find someone. And it could be an AI player, or a real player. That is astoundingly cool.
The other area is companion apps. With the Sony handheld gaming systems and Microsoft's support for tablets and cell-phones I'm now seeing titles like the upcoming The Division where a companion app does more than simply offer additional information or stats. They can now enable a friend to offer limited support.
A computer power of a massive cloud server farm can used build infinitely more complex procedural worlds, and games like Forza use that power to compute an AI driver based on your play style that can compete for you. Titanfall is rumoured to have a similar idea where an AI learns to play like your friends do so you can have an ally with the same gaming style even when your friends are offline. And this is just scratching the surface.
There is a fault in this whole argument though. There is nothing barring Sony from supporting similar cloud services. There is nothing in Microsoft's hardware that enables this. And there is nothing the PS4 is lacking that would stop it from leveraging it either. Heck, Sony *COULD* simply pay Microsoft for the azure compute time. They likely wouldn't. But they could.
Microsoft's advantage is twofold. It is in their DNA and they have the head start both from an advertising perspective and from a tech perspective. Azure has been out for a few years now, and has matured rather quickly. There are already many devs out there that know the SDK's and technologies.
Sony, undoubtedly, has the resources to build out their own such solution. It might take them longer to reach the stage Microsoft is at. But they could do it. Or, they could pay Amazon or a similar Azure competitor and simply wrap access inside of their own SDK.
I'm still not trying to break my silence on the Xbox One vs. PS4 debates. Hopefully you can see that, in my opinion, on this topic, there is no real clear winner and the content is more about the underlying technology discussed.
I agree, the cloud will revolutionize computing and gaming. Slowly at first with things like storing saved games in the cloud and generating AI's as we're seeing today. But the future I think is much more intricate than even that. Just like games like Watch Dogs strive to make multiplayer just disappear and add magic to the game, over time the same will happen with cloud integration. The cloud will be making meaningful changes to your games that improve them, but that wouldn't be recognized for what they were if someone hadn't pointed it out.
The argument is that the Xbox One has done that this generation, and the PS4 hasn't. And that differentiator with the Xbox One is that it is backed by Microsoft's cloud services.
I actually agree with this argument entirely. The Kinect sensor and the cloud integration are two ways in which the Xbox One can build out games to drastically out class Sony. I don't know in what ways it would manifest, but this generation of gaming is already bringing new ideas, and some of them do sort of meld with the cloud.
Multiplayer is evolving. One of the coolest ideas I've seen is the multiplayer in the upcoming Watch Dogs game, where the multiplayer is basically seamlessly integrated into the single player experience and you are either the hunter or the hunted. You don't wait in a lobby for a game, or find a friend to play with. Out of nowhere you may get a quest to either evade detection or find someone. And it could be an AI player, or a real player. That is astoundingly cool.
The other area is companion apps. With the Sony handheld gaming systems and Microsoft's support for tablets and cell-phones I'm now seeing titles like the upcoming The Division where a companion app does more than simply offer additional information or stats. They can now enable a friend to offer limited support.
A computer power of a massive cloud server farm can used build infinitely more complex procedural worlds, and games like Forza use that power to compute an AI driver based on your play style that can compete for you. Titanfall is rumoured to have a similar idea where an AI learns to play like your friends do so you can have an ally with the same gaming style even when your friends are offline. And this is just scratching the surface.
There is a fault in this whole argument though. There is nothing barring Sony from supporting similar cloud services. There is nothing in Microsoft's hardware that enables this. And there is nothing the PS4 is lacking that would stop it from leveraging it either. Heck, Sony *COULD* simply pay Microsoft for the azure compute time. They likely wouldn't. But they could.
Microsoft's advantage is twofold. It is in their DNA and they have the head start both from an advertising perspective and from a tech perspective. Azure has been out for a few years now, and has matured rather quickly. There are already many devs out there that know the SDK's and technologies.
Sony, undoubtedly, has the resources to build out their own such solution. It might take them longer to reach the stage Microsoft is at. But they could do it. Or, they could pay Amazon or a similar Azure competitor and simply wrap access inside of their own SDK.
I'm still not trying to break my silence on the Xbox One vs. PS4 debates. Hopefully you can see that, in my opinion, on this topic, there is no real clear winner and the content is more about the underlying technology discussed.
I agree, the cloud will revolutionize computing and gaming. Slowly at first with things like storing saved games in the cloud and generating AI's as we're seeing today. But the future I think is much more intricate than even that. Just like games like Watch Dogs strive to make multiplayer just disappear and add magic to the game, over time the same will happen with cloud integration. The cloud will be making meaningful changes to your games that improve them, but that wouldn't be recognized for what they were if someone hadn't pointed it out.
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