Xbox One: Microsoft’s supergeeks reveal what’s inside the hardware
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
"One of the machine’s operating systems boots up and is “created” when the machine turns on, Multerer said. Then it stays operating while the machine is on, and then disappears when the machine is turned off."
"There’s a third operating system as well that handles other kinds of services, such as the TV services. Switching between these operating systems quickly gives the system its instantaneous feel, Multerer said."
It isn't immediately obvious to me why we would want to use multiple operating systems? Is this a kind of super strong separation of processes? Why aren't standard processes sufficient? Is it done for reliability?
I am not criticising, I am just confused and this indicates that there are concerns here that I am not familiar with. Anyone with any insights?
This might also make it easier to rip pieces off later, or add large pieces later, without needing to do a comprehensive integration across the Xbox One system, while keeping everything in its own sandbox.
Also it wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft in the future releases a cheap AppleTV competitor with just the TV VM and a cheap gaming only XBox with just the Gaming VM.
Couldn't follow that link, due to the '>'
So, will it need always online? In that case, here is a console I will never buy.
The basic question is, is it more efficient and overall cheaper to have #(max. concurrent clients) times the hardware running in a hosted (remote) environment than having #(all clients) times the hardware running locally. Clearly #(max. concurrent clients) is much lower than #(all clients). MS, as the owner of the platform is in a pretty good position of balancing between thin and thick client and forcing developers to work within this model, ie. making the client thin (read: cheap) enough that critical calculations need to be done on the server but thick enough to run some latency critical stuff and probably some of the rendering on the client.
If my SimCity simulation needs more than a quad i7 to simulate, how many high-CPU instances is that? How many to handle every connected user? Even EA's current SimCity instances on EC2 can't handle basic save operations.
[1] http://www.wpcentral.com/xbox-one-no-bc-not-always-online
Think of it this way: if the low-millisecond latency internet is good enough for multiplayer FPSs, i.e. exchange of player/missile coordinates, then why not use it for other aspects of game data too?
The article may have been a bit fuzzy in its discussion in general, but I believe it communicated clearly enough that gfx are on the GPU and longer latency stuff such as AI (which is _not_ computed in nanoseconds, nor does it need to be completely deterministic) can be done via external network interface.
Cloud AI has all kinds of other advantages, too, such as dynamically scaling difficulty, which we already see examples of in Starcraft 2...
OnLive, despite failing, was not dissimilar to "cloud rendered graphics" and it worked. Lots of things people thought impossible 10 years ago are now commonplace.
Nothing wrong with that, others do it. But it does mean that gaming performance is compromised to achieve other objectives.
I'd be very surprised if there were 300,000 physical servers.
And how are people who don't have high-speed internet supposed to use it???
Given that at the moment it appears to be related to things such as voice + facial recognition and processing (which frankly I would want to see the privacy policy around) that's fine. No internet, means I have to press a button rather than yell. OK with that.
If its offloading games physics and AI when playing, well that's fine if its optional. I appreciate that certain kinds of ANNs distribute really well on server farms, in a way that makes sense. But so long as its optional.
However I think it is only a few years before we look back and laugh at the idea of not having internet access available. At least I hope we will.
But there is a different culture around PC and Console. Console has always had DRM, PCs drifted along with CD-Keys that limited online play, then Steam came along, which /r/gaming appears to fawn over, yet deride any similar change in DRM on the consoles.
As it stands, I think the PS3/Xbox360 are less restrictive because of their DRM than PC gamers who have to use Steam or Origin. The publishers needed a mechanism to stop what was told as rampant piracy. Steam filled that void.
Now consoles are moving more in that direction people are treating it as if its universally bad. It doesn't have to be. So long as it isn't a case of always internet, always on, from day one, I don't think it will be.
I remember people banging on about SmartClients less than 10 years ago. These were apps which would sync when the internet became available and gracefully handle the disconnection. Ironically Outlook was often the example. Nowadays most devs don't bother with that because there isn't the demand and its not worth the increased development and maintenance costs. I wanted some flowcharting software the other day, the first 3 hits were all online cloudy hosted type things. This is the way things are going, there are benefits, its not all bad!
I'll believe it in a couple of years when someone finds jtag headers on the board.
1) Make the console 5x to 10x more powerful than the previous generation.
2) Open the platform up to indies, like Apple have, with an annual subscription of $100, coupled with a reasonable percentage cut (not 60%!).
The rest takes care of itself.
I personally know 4 students that were focusing 100% on XNA development; They're now scrambling to learn SDL and OpenGL ES after being burned by Microsoft. Seems the only developer embracing indies is Valve, and they're going to be the only ones focusing on that blue ocean this generation.
That does not inspire confidence in your ability to move to the cloud, Xbox team.
Why does it seem like Microsoft has such a hard time keeping their servers running? Then the next question that comes to mind is why do they still have cloud customers? I mean, I'm one of them; I use Xbox Music Pass and Technet and Xbox Live and Outlook.com but I can't answer the question as to why. Why do people put up with it?
When did that happen? Any source?
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-forced-to-apologize...
[2] http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-outlookcom-down-for-som...
[3] http://gigaom.com/2013/02/01/microsoft-office-365-hits-potho...