Xbox Live Compute Is 18 Months Old, Titanfall Heavily Reliant

Posted Nov 5 2013 by Dylan Zellmer with 87 Comments

Xbox-Live-Compute-Architecture

Xbox Live lead program manager John Bruno stated during today’s GDC Next “On Demand Compute: Power For Games” session that he and his team has been working on Xbox Live Compute for 18 months. The service is a derivative of the Windows Azure platform that was re-purposed to be more gaming-centric for use with Microsoft‘s upcoming Xbox One platform.

Bruno stated that compute was met with harsh criticism early on, and it took some time to turn studios like Ubisoft onto the idea. As Bruno rattled off the many very real benefits of developers using the XBLC cloud servers he migrated to two of Xbox One’s marquis titles; Forza Motorsport 5 and Titanfall. He mentioned that the team at Respawn Entertainment was an easier sell on the idea, and that they were using the power of the cloud to great potential. Titanfall would be offloading CPU taxing things like AI and online NPC computations onto the compute servers. As Bruno continued on he came upon the subject of OS updates. Bruno stated,

“Once in a while, rather frequently actually, the host OS will require an update, meaning the physical machine is going to get rebooted, whether your code is running or not. That’s a problematic thing for a game, and is oftentimes is in the middle of a multiplayer session, we’ve worked very hard to overcome that, but that’s not to say it’s going to be a reality in every case.”

This got me to thinking about Titanfall. A game that’s not going to have a run-of-the-mill offline mode. A game that’s relying heavily on XBLC to offload it’s AI and NPC computations. I asked Bruno what type of functionality we can expect a game like that to retain if servers are rebooted for OS updates, or in a far worse case, become unavailable. To which Bruno answered,

“I can’t answer that. I don’t know what the guys over at Titanfall have built into their game. It’s up to the game developer. If they want to rely more on our XBLC service, we’re happy to support that. We do provide a platform for them to persist data, but that’s up to the developer to utilize that.”

This really has me questioning the online-only dynamic. Bruno seemed to be suggesting that Titanfall is heavily relying on XBLC, and wasn’t able to outright confirm that the title would remain functional without the cloud support. From what I gather, Titanfall may be relying on XBLC to the point that it may not be a functioning game without the cloud up and running. For all the apparent benefits of XBLC, it seems like there may be harsh pitfalls as well. I wasn’t aware that Xbox engineers had only been working on Xbox Live Compute for eighteen months. Throw in the fact that a good deal has changed since E3, and we’re left with more than a few questions; specifically for games like Titanfall that rely on the cloud so immensely.

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Dylan Zellmer

EIC at iGame Responsibly
Dylan splits time between games journalism, designing video games, and playing them. Outside of his deep involvement in the games industry, he enjoys It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Shameless, A Song of Ice and Fire, fitness, and family.
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  • BrianC6234

    This thing won’t make games better. It won’t make 720p games into 1080p.

    • John Joe Silver

      no but time and experience with the hardware will…. clearly the X1 is capable of 1080p (fifa,nba, need for speed, forza etc etc)…. infinity ward said the reason they dropped to 720p on the X1 was that they couldn’t maintain steady framerates, they couldn’t maintain them on the PS4 either so it points to lazy devs rather than bad hardware on the both consoles…. is PS4 easier to develop for, i wouldn’t no personally but i’m assuming so as a number of games are native 1080p… will it change in a year that X1 will be majority 1080p, i hope so

      • bleedsoe9mm

        not necessarily laziness on the developers just launching 2 consoles crunch , hard to learn all the ins and outs of new hardware in the time permitted , and the ps4 didn’t have the late changes that the xb1 did .

        • John Joe Silver

          i’m only saying laziness as need for speed is managing 1080p on both (although it’s unconfirmed whether native or not) and so are pretty much all the sports games (i understand not as complex as COD or BF but yeah)

          • bleedsoe9mm

            not to mention that the ps4 version of cod and the pc version of bf4 are both having issues , could be because of time constraints with dealing with 2 new machines

      • Counterproductive

        The WiiU is capable of 1080p too, if they cut effects and texture sizes. I don’t want a gimped version of the game.

        • Joseph Lan

          Exactly. Since the Xbox One is much weaker in graphics capability than the PS4, it would have to severely downgrade effects and textures in order to run at full 1080p like the PS4 does. Running at a higher resolution like 1080p seriously impacts framerates, so quality needs to be sacrificed on the weaker Xbox One to compensate.

          It’s a matter of pick your poison, Xbox fans. Would you prefer a 720p game with all or most of the effects and graphical fidelity intact? Or would you rather have 1080p with downgraded visual quality? You can’t really have both in this case.

    • ShowanW

      Did you read the article?

    • Michael Padilla

      Ahhh if you free up processor power on console by sending the data to the servers to process than yes it can actually allow the dev to increase the resolution. Resolution gets reduced cuz they hit the processing cap and had to reduce resolution to increase framerate or add other effects. Plus alot of graphic heavy games r running on 1080p 60fps on xbox one don’t go by COD that game looks like shit compared to current gen graphics if it didn’t run at 1080p its because the developer is a moron that game should be 2160p with those playstation 2 graphics it has.

      • TristanPR77

        Oh yeah, then let’s get to BF4, Titanfall or Dear Rising, they will run at 720p. Are all those devs morons too?

        The xbone is an inferior console and period, no words can change that. Drop the denial please.

      • Joseph Lan

        The cloud cannot be used for realtime graphics processing, so it won’t help an Xbox One game achieve 1080p.

  • Christian Dixon

    “Titanfall may be relying on XBLC to the point that it may not be a functioning game without the cloud up and running.”

    Did everyone miss that???

    • Xtrm Xpdr

      A game that is online only and can’t work without the internet…

      • You know there’s a distinct difference between internet and cloud computing, right?

        • John Joe Silver

          yeah but aren’t xbox one’s clouds the same servers that xbox live are using? it’s reasonable to assume if one goes down both will be down

          • Michael Padilla

            yes cloud servers are physical servers and this guy who was quoted in the article will most likely be slapped by MS execs no way 300,000 servers all go down or reboot at once thats moronic. Windows Azure is a professional service for banks and other big companies I cannot imagine that a banks computer system will go down cuz servers r rebooting come on guys. if the server your on reboots your game gets shifted to another server thats already updated. MS has already said they can expand at will for MMO games when users hit cap MS cloud starts up another server and moves users there.

          • bigshynepo

            The 300,000 servers you hear about are virtual servers. This is confirmed by Jonathan Blow, designer of Braid.

            Let me quote kingofjamaica:

            The cost-benefit on 300,000 physical servers for just the Xbox One points directly to Microsoft carefully selecting the details they released to give just enough misinformation that it sounds impressive, but not enough misinformation for it to be false advertising.

            It’s okay if you bought into the half-truth, most people did and it’s exactly how Microsoft intended the information be received.

          • Gekko36

            Cloud Servers means virtual, dick head!. A cloud server is elastic for memory, CPU and Diskspace, not to mention bandwith with nics. I’d rather have 300,000 VM’s than 300,000 physical “disasters waiting to happen”.

          • bigshynepo

            Why you yelling at me bro? I specifically said “The 300,000 servers you hear about are virtual servers.”
            It’s all your xbot friends that don’t understand that.

            Check yourself before you wreck yourself next time, your comment was just embarrassing.

  • cubs223425

    World of Warcraft is pretty-much the biggest game ever, definitely the biggest MMO ever, and it’s been running on the always-on concept every day to the tune of 10 million+ subscribers at $15/month each. Every week, WoW’s servers go down, usually for about 15 minutes (more like a few hours on patch days), and the game updates. The world keeps turning while it happens, and people don’t have their heads explode.

    There really isn’t enough information offered here to get a good idea of how this works. how often are the rests? How long are the resets? Will it affect all cloud-based games at once, or do they do it in segments? If it’s anything like WoW, you reset the server for 15 minutes, but you use Microsoft’s habit of doing things around 2 AM Pacific and minimize the effects it has on users.

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  • Kirkpad

    Few things:

    You guys should know that TItanfall was clearly being marketed as an online-only game from the start. Why would you want to play a multiplayer game by yourself? If they require the cloud to do computations for their game, then what else would you expect?

    And wow 18 months? I feel like Sony made the right move in picking up Gaikai while they had the chance. Pretty sure their whole backend was made for mutiplayer just like OnLive’s is.

    The only surprising thing here is the OS restarting thing, which sounds to actually affect gameplay. From the description it sounds like the cloud server hosting the match, AI, physics, etc. will need to have its OS updated regularly. How regularly and how long it takes to restart/install is going to be the big issue here.

    • Daniel Lawson

      don’t you spew logic out like it does people any good!!!1!1!!1!!11!!!eleven!!!

    • bigshynepo

      I guess I’m going to have to see how the cloud impacts the Titanfall experience. I know we’ll hear lots about “Titanfall is only possible on the Xbox One” but with the sequels inevitably making it to PS4, these “computations” being sent to and from the cloud can probably be replicated when the architecture is changed.

      After EA and my experience with “the cloud computing” in Sim City, I have a hard time believing the cloud is required for anything so far.

      And lets not forget the unplayable mess Sim City was for a week and a half, not buggy, not an occasional dropped connection, it was straight up unplayable due to the “cloud”. Keep in mind, EA is publishing Titanfall as well.

  • GameonAll

    Another idiotic article - great job

    Why would AN ONLINE ONLY GAME every work if the cloud is down?

    That is the equal of a PC only game working when the pc is off. duh!!!

    • bigshynepo

      But like Sim City showed us, even when the cloud is up and running, EA’s games might not work.

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  • hiruu

    “I can’t answer that. I don’t know what the guys over at Titanfall have built into their game. It’s up to the game developer. If they want to rely more on our XBLC service, we’re happy to support that. We do provide a platform for them to persist data, but that’s up to the developer to utilize that.�?
    Phil Spencer says something completely different from that…Can we be provided the interview, in it’s entirety please.

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  • hiruu

    “I wasn’t aware that Xbox engineers had only been working on Xbox Live Compute for eighteen months. Throw in the fact that a good deal has changed since E3, and we’re left with more than a few questions; specifically for games like Titanfall that rely on the cloud so immensely.”
    Errr…no…Windows Azure has been around FAR longer than 18 months, but re-tooling it to create XBLC is only 18 months…if you can’t comprehend the difference…well…nuff said.

    • Michael Padilla

      word guy who wrote this article is def missing afew details

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  • laserfloyd

    So it’s like MMOs where a server has to be up and online for you to play? I should hope the XBox community has enough patience to endure a presumably short downtime during off-peak hours. I can’t see MS having servers restarting mid session at 8pm EST.

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  • Ed

    once in awhile, actually quite frequently, we announce more bad news for the Xbox One

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  • TristanPR77

    This is more serious than I though. Do you imagine your console rebooting out of the blue without any warning? Oh, and frequently.

    That’s very ugly

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  • cubs223425

    Something I didn’t think about the first time I read this article: If Titanfall is heavily-reliant on XBLC, how does that affect the PC version? Is it that consoles can’t handle the computations, but PCs can, so there is no need for cloud-based stuff? Is Microsoft servers for the PC version? Is EA/Respawn buying/renting their own servers to do the XBLC stuff for the PC version (if so, why aren’t they using their own stuff for the Xbox versions)?

    • klondikepappy

      Xbox One doesn’t allow the use of third party servers.

      • bigshynepo

        Where have you gotten that information?

        Many games last generation (360) were hosted on EA servers.

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