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Ex-Valve and Stadia's Kim Swift joins Xbox for Cloud Games

Javthusiast

Banned
If this is an online only game that uses the servers for shit like we were promised with Crackdown years ago, then it could be cool, but a cloud only game would suck.
 
So... you didn't play Death Stranding I take it?
No, but considering how online communities in most of exclusive Playstation games evaporated - I am not far from truth. I mean, Xbox literally was created with online communities in mind - people argued then that nobody plays online games - and most of its first party games have strong online / co-op / multiplayer component. While on Playstation - casuals aside who play CoD / GTA Online / Fortnite - people has some special aversion to online games (never understood why though).

Only now - after a generation basically - Sony is again is trying to invest into multplayer games, while on Xbox it is hard to say which doesn't have some co-op or multiplayer features. Even its tentpole franchises like Gears or Halo - live by their online community. Halo Multiplayer is bigger event than Halo campaign even.
 
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Kuranghi

Member
I hope it properly realises something as spectacular as the cloud physics in Crackdown 3 were supposed to be. I like it when the mans fall down, imagine a 1000 mans falling down at once.
 

Kilau

Gold Member
Didn't the original Death Stranding have the online support and the concept was to build the connections by the other users? Like one player leaves some items or whatever, another player picks it up. It would not work on Playstation - as its community has never been that much into co-op or online unlike Xbox - but the concept was there.
It worked perfectly. It’s asynchronous, you find lost packages or fulfill deliveries plus shared infrastructure.
 

01011001

Banned
god damned traitor if true, hope Sony don't let him use Decima engine

Decima sucks... Death Stranding looked barely better, if at all, than MGS5 and ran at half the framerate. it sucked that they couldn't use the Fox Engine because Konami now has that rotting away in their basement, unused and forgotten.

so I sure hope they won't let him use Decima again for his own good
 
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j0hnnix

Member
At first I thought Little Kim the rapper became a developer, I feel bamboozled. Anyways Kojima will be happy to have her on the team to work on that abandoned Silent Hill game 😉
 

01011001

Banned
I hope it properly realises something as spectacular as the cloud physics in Crackdown 3 were supposed to be.

the issue about that is, how do you make a decent game with that? this would only ever work in a massive multiplayer shooter or something, and destroying the map would need to be hard to do... hard enough so that the whole map isn't just flattened after 1 minute but not too hard so you still could do spectacular and fun shit.

either way, map design would be hellish
 

Kuranghi

Member
the issue about that is, how do you make a decent game with that? this would only ever work in a massive multiplayer shooter or something, and destroying the map would need to be hard to do... hard enough so that the whole map isn't just flattened after 1 minute but not too hard so you still could do spectacular and fun shit.

either way, map design would be hellish

I meant anything with physics on that scale, not necessarily buildings falling down, I agree with you. Like much better water simulations or other things they can't do with the local CPU.

Like the Morrowind "spawning melons on a mountain" video level of physics but it runs properly. I was so blown away by HL2's physics when it came out due to the wood/boxes breaking into pieces system and the mattresses and such, I want to see the true next level of that.
 
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Spidey Fan

Banned
Holy shit the boss of Bluebox is GHG GHG !
Oh No Wow GIF by ESPN
 

01011001

Banned
I meant anything with physics on that scale, not necessarily buildings falling down, I agree with you. Like much better water simulations or other things they can't do with the local CPU.

Like the Morrowind "spawning melons on a mountain" video level of physics but it runs properly.

I wonder if they'll ever update Sea of Thieves to have even better looking water lol. the water is already basically cloud based (the water/wave movement is synchronized across the server)
add realistic looking drops and scoops of water that get swept into your ship and more realistic wave patterns along beaches and rocks... could be done I bet.
 
Nothing states this means a cloud only game. It's more likely it just leverages the cloud/Azure stack in ways like Flight Sim does to make that idea a reality.

If the rumors are true that this game was the one he was doing for stadia then i think it was clould only.
 

01011001

Banned
If the rumors are true that this game was the one he was doing for stadia then i think it was clould only.

Stadia is cloud streaming only... so of course...
the difference here is that with Xbox he can make a game that runs locally on your system, which means it will look better (no compression + Artifacting) and feel better to play (no added stream lag)
and he can still use all the benefits a cloud based game has, like having physics, world streaming, AI or other stuff run on the server.

so it won't be a streamed game, but I think it will be either online only, using the Azure servers to do something that would not be possible on local hardware... the question is what that is he wants to do.
 

elliot5

Member
If the rumors are true that this game was the one he was doing for stadia then i think it was clould only.
well yeah because Stadia is cloud only. It can easily work on other devices or be adapted, and it would have to because xCloud runs on Xbox hardware server blades. If it runs on that xbox hardware, it would run on your xbox hardware.
 
well yeah because Stadia is cloud only. It can easily work on other devices or be adapted, and it would have to because xCloud runs on Xbox hardware server blades. If it runs on that xbox hardware, it would run on your xbox hardware.

Yea i guess it depends on how far along the game was already and if he's working on a bigger exclusive for playstation.
 

HoodWinked

Member
This seems dumb I thought she was a game/level designer, joining the cloud team is more in line of software engineering.
 

elliot5

Member
This seems dumb I thought she was a game/level designer, joining the cloud team is more in line of software engineering.
She is a designer, her role is to come up with innovative ideas and help other partners/studios in coming up with creative ways of leveraging the cloud and working with MS/Azure to make it happen.
 

KRYPT83

Member
I'll be honest, I've sort of ignored all talk of cloud and how it relates to gaming. Not out of spite, it's just something I hear in passing and don't think about. I just know it has something to do with streaming and storage capacity.

But I'm a big fan of Kojima, so I suppose I should educate myself.
If you played death stranding that was a single player game but you connected to a server and had a community that could help build and maintain stuff in the world. I imagine Kojima will take this idea x10 in this next game he makes
 

reksveks

Member
This seems dumb I thought she was a game/level designer, joining the cloud team is more in line of software engineering.
I think it's a solutions architect kinda of role, so helping matching the design goals of the devs to the applicable functions in the azure platform.
 

The Alien

Banned
I hope it properly realises something as spectacular as the cloud physics in Crackdown 3 were supposed to be. I like it when the mans fall down, imagine a 1000 mans falling down at once.
Yeah. Crackdown 3 was pretty unfortunate.
I think.itbwas gonna be great and innovative. Then after 3 devs left (acquisitions, etc.), they just wanted that game out the door.

What we got was....not great.
 
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