Sony: 'of course' PS4 can do cloud computing

What about Sony's next-gen machine? Can it also follow Microsoft's step in offloading computation to the cloud? "Of course," Sony's Shuhei Yoshida said.

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Microsoft has been keen to promote Xbox One's use of the cloud. Xbox One's official website, for example, states that "thanks to the power of the cloud, Xbox One will keep getting better." Cloud computing supposedly makes Xbox One four times more powerful. It also justifies why Xbox One is effectively an always-on console.

But what about Sony's next-gen machine? Sure, it can stream games via the cloud-powered Gaikai. But can it also follow Microsoft's step in offloading computation to the cloud? "Of course," Sony's Shuhei Yoshida said.

"Linking, matchmaking... there are already many computations being done on the cloud side," Yoshida told Polygon. And although PS4 won't require an internet connection to use, Yoshida said that "if your title needs [an] online connection to provide some online features: Go for it."

There you go. Both consoles can do cloud computing. Although be warned--it's all pretty much a load of rubbish either way. Hooray for marketing!

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    June 15, 2013 5:00 PM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Sony: 'of course' PS4 can do cloud computing.

    What about Sony's next-gen machine? Can it also follow Microsoft's step in offloading computation to the cloud? "Of course," Sony's Shuhei Yoshida said.

    • reply
      June 15, 2013 5:13 PM

      [deleted]

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 5:36 PM

        'offloading stuff to the cloud' is basically just sending information back and forth over the internet. This is a software feature, not a hardware feature. You can offload computing to the cloud on any device - One of the older examples is SETI@home, which basically does exactly that (but in reverse admittedly).

        There is nothing special about the Xbone hardware that would make it any better or worse than any other device with an internet connection since, however you want to spin it, remains the one component you have to do it with in every case.

        Aside from that, another company claimed that cloud computing was necessary for one of it's services not too long ago. I don't really see how it's impossible that MS is lying about it aswell.

        Though, on the other hand, you're right - Sony is not doing the same thing MS is. They're simply keeping it optional instead of making it mandatory, or at least making it seem like that.

        • reply
          June 15, 2013 5:49 PM

          Go here : http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/?scenario=virtual-machines

          Microsoft have amazing cloud services that they've been building for years ... Azure is very very cool.

          However all those services and virtual machines cost money, will they really allow games to make use of them and if so how much. It COULD be a huge deal though, and no Sony don't have the facilities to do it.

          • reply
            June 15, 2013 6:04 PM

            Azure and the cloud as meant for the Xbone are very different things. They may use Azure infrastructure though, but this would be interesting to see - Azure clients being impacted by Xbone usage.

            If both Azure and the Xbone suddenly grew in popularity and usage over the course of a few weeks, MS would have major problems aswell keeping up with the hardware demands and at the very least you'd have a short time where the performance for both would be very, very bad. Of course, only the customer would actually feel the impact so they won't care ;p

            • reply
              June 15, 2013 6:20 PM

              They're not really different things as they use Azure as a general term for all there server stuff. Azure already handles Xbox Live.

            • reply
              June 15, 2013 7:31 PM

              [deleted]

            • reply
              June 15, 2013 8:11 PM

              This is not correct, Everything you've stated here is you're speculation/assumptions and each of them are wrong.

          • reply
            June 16, 2013 9:54 AM

            SQL Azure is fucking awful. Windows Azure is better, but it's still kinda meh to me.

            • reply
              June 16, 2013 10:02 AM

              I personally don't like SQL Azure at all. From an Operations standpoint, it sorta works like SQL but there is too much missing compared to real SQL. Azure Storage (table/blob/etc) is a better solution normally but you lose the RDBness of course. Normally this isn't a big deal and is just something you work around and end up finding you didn't absolutely need.

              The compute roles (standard worker/iis/linux/etc) and service roles (service bus, ad, etc etc) are great when you fully design your service/app around them. Nothing on the market comes close to those infrastructure pieces.

        • reply
          June 15, 2013 8:18 PM

          Listen to the Respawn folks on this week's Bombcast; they do a really good job of explaining how the cloud network architecture on the Xbox One actually does make a difference. Fanboys will write off their response as bullshit, of course, but it sounds like it creates a lot of interesting possibilities for developers.

          • reply
            June 16, 2013 12:51 AM

            I don't recall them saying anything in particular about it except that it is being used for spinning up multiplayer servers, something S3 and Gakai already do.

    • reply
      June 15, 2013 5:17 PM

      So what happens when developers come to rely on "the power of the cloud" to stream AI and assets? Will multi-platform titles perform remarkably better on Xbox One? Because developers won't be able to rely on the cloud on PS4; not everyone will be online.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 5:37 PM

        lol

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 5:40 PM

        I'd be more concerned about the Xbone RAM

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 5:41 PM

        There's absolutely no way "the cloud" will be used for AI.

        • reply
          June 15, 2013 5:53 PM

          Titanfall uses it for AI unless they're lying which is possible.

          • reply
            June 15, 2013 6:01 PM

            They're lying, unless the AI is extremely lazy. It may need to respond to player actions very quickly, but how does it do that when there's at least a 100ms delay (depending on your connection) for information to go back and forth from console to server, and you still need the time to actually do the calculations?

            If the Titanfall AI really is cloudbased, be prepared for one of the worst AI's in gaming history. Any challenging AI NEEDS local resources to be fast enough to respond.

            • reply
              June 15, 2013 6:08 PM

              [deleted]

              • reply
                June 15, 2013 6:10 PM

                I'm glad there's so many developers here telling us what is and isn't possible on a service no one knows hardly anything about.

            • reply
              June 15, 2013 7:32 PM

              Surely every mmorpg uses cloud based AI?

            • reply
              June 15, 2013 8:19 PM

              You literally have no idea what you're talking about.

            • reply
              June 15, 2013 9:34 PM

              Why is 100ms too slow for AI? Your brain takes about that long to react to physical movements, and that's just immediate reactions, not deeper thinking. So why can't a 100ms + computing time be viable for non-immediate AI?

              • reply
                June 16, 2013 3:47 PM



                being shot.. must hide...
                not being shot.. must kill stuff...

                or ya.. for global AI/pathfinding for random npcs or something just like fucking around town, n animals n shit. The 100ms delay should be a non issue i would think.

                i dont see why it couldnt, but i dun really know wtf im talking about either.

            • reply
              June 16, 2013 6:41 AM

              [deleted]

          • reply
            June 16, 2013 12:55 AM

            Can you cite a source? All the information I've seen (and on the Bombcast extended talk with them), they're only using it for dedicate server spawning in different regions.

        • reply
          June 15, 2013 6:07 PM

          Any MP game you play with bots you're playing with cloud ai. We've been doing it for a decade and a half now. Why is this unreasonable?

          • reply
            June 15, 2013 6:10 PM

            [deleted]

            • reply
              June 15, 2013 6:26 PM

              [deleted]

              • reply
                June 15, 2013 6:30 PM

                I'm a believe it when you see it person, but they could make this work, the structure is there and its just improving what we've already been doing anyway. It just depends how much they're going to do it and what real world gains we're get.

            • reply
              June 15, 2013 7:37 PM

              yah but the experience could vary greatly depending on latency... everything is fine when your ping is good. But if the server response creeps up to 200ms+ you'd likely notice as your enemies would be lagging.

          • reply
            June 15, 2013 10:45 PM

            It's not quite the same thing, since the simulation is happening on the same machine as the AI in that case

            • reply
              June 16, 2013 8:24 AM

              Nah, you can host a game with bots on one machine and connect to is as a normal player from another machine.

              • reply
                June 16, 2013 8:31 AM

                the simulation is still happening on the host

                • Ebu legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
                  reply
                  June 16, 2013 10:34 AM

                  If the host is running a dedicated server to which all players connect, it's cloud AI.
                  If the host is a player hosting other players, it's cloud AI for all players but the host.

                  None of that matters, though, because "the cloud" is a fucking stupid term.

        • reply
          June 16, 2013 10:02 AM

          Macro/micro AI could be different.

          Maybe like strategic vs. tactical AI?

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 5:41 PM

        It's a marketing hoax or MS would have laid out the technical specs. Not to mention you can see they videos of their games for yourself and there's nothing to show these games have 10x the processing power of anything current.

        Here the TitanFall guy says it's really only used for dedicated servers, which is hardly new.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kZy3VIVqAY4#t=67s

        • reply
          June 15, 2013 6:36 PM

          Yep. Marketing buzz word designed to make up for hardware shortcomings.

        • reply
          June 15, 2013 6:57 PM

          Blast Processing of this generation.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 5:42 PM

        lol

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 5:44 PM

        It's not going to work for anything like AI, too much latency. I think we will find that very few multiplats will use it since it's not a guaranteed to be there (ps4,shitty Internet, etc)

        Xbone exclusives might use it but it's not going to make this crazy difference in graphics or performance.

        • reply
          June 15, 2013 6:21 PM

          [deleted]

          • reply
            June 15, 2013 6:48 PM

            Yeah people are overthinking some of this. Think more in lines of dedicated servers, we've been doing this for years.

          • reply
            June 15, 2013 10:56 PM

            Cloud computing isn't about running stuff on the server, it's about harnassing the cpu of the xbone that's not being played at the moment. So you need to push game state information to those idle xbones and receive the reply in a reasonable amount of time. Because you have to do this frequently and dynamically, there is a lot of network processing to be done. XBones come on and off the cloud unpredicatably so you probably always need to push new game state with each bundle of processing to be done. The latency likely isn't the problem so much as the waste incurred in trying to have latency-sensitive items processed asap. So I would imagine this would be more useful for larger bundles of processing such as random level generation or perhaps video decoding.

            • reply
              June 15, 2013 11:17 PM

              this is not even remotely what cloud computing means... you seem to think this is Cell processing redux, it has nothing to do with using other peoples' idle Xbox

              • reply
                June 16, 2013 8:38 AM

                hmm well I was wrong about how XB1 will work, I assumed that's how they would implement cloud computing. Having that many servers to reinforce the XB1 would be very expensive, I'm surprised they are promising such robust servers. But i guess they can promise anything, we'll see what actually happens.

                However, most of the issues with network processing are still present even in the server cloud they are promising. You can't really rely on it for anything latency sensitive.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 5:46 PM

        Hmm.. why are posts from shackbrowse not showing up.. Seems if I make a second post from my PC, it will cause the original to appear.. /ghosts

        • reply
          June 15, 2013 5:46 PM

          Yup, immediately appeared after I made this post.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 5:54 PM

        Some may try it but i doubt that experiment will last long. Offloading stuff to cloud computing relies on a stable and fast internet connection. If enough of your target audience gets a (really) bad experience due to internet connection problems or server problems, you're going to get really, REALLY bad PR. Look at EA: Just a few months after SC5's launch they're backpedalling on the entire issue and even scrapping online passes and such. Ubisoft tried it with a few games and dropped it real quiet last year.

        Also, the only devs willing to use the Xbone cloud thing are first party (exclusive) games. Halo, Fable, Gears of War and Forza are currently the only franchises which would possibly make use of it like that right now, barring any new exclusives from very likely the same developers. This is for a simple reason: You don't want to shut out the PS4 audience, like you wouldn't want to shut out the PS3 one right now.

        Whatever way you want to put it, if you make a game for both the 360 and PS4 you *double* your possible market (both consoles sold around 70-75m times iirc). Why would you only want to dev for the 360 if you can attract 70m more people by making relatively minor changes to release it on the PS3 aswell?

        The same will happen for the next gen devices, especially since the PS4 will likely have a far larger installbase in the first few months than the Xbone due to all this hoopla. It doens't make any kind of financial sense to shut out such a large audience from your games, taking a risk on MS servers staying stable and up and trusting consumer internet connections. You'd only set yourself up for a big fall.

        All of that, plus what i posted in an earlier comment - Your internet connection will still be the limiting factor in all of this. The big attraction of consoles for developers is that everyone has the same hardware. However, they cannot have a guarantee about the internet connections. IF they use the cloud thing, they may only use it in a very limited way to make sure they don't overreach and require consumers to at least have 100mbit connections to sync up properly. Lag is also a damning factor in all this - You can't have a server in every city, village and hamlet on the world so some people will have lower performance even if you assume the bandwidth will be identical. Add multiplayer to the equation and you can see how volatile a mix this is.

        There are so many points where this online only approach can go wrong. You may argue that it's no different for an MMO, but in that case you're not trying to play a singleplayer game as would be the case for the cloud idea from MS, which basically acts as a DRM device rather than something that adds to a game. Diablo 3 showed how that can go wrong already over a year ago. Does MS think i really want to have a very laggy and buggy singleplayer experience just to have a 'friend comes online' popup while im playing?

        Just imagine playing Shadow of the Colossus and being booted out of the game because your ISP goes down for a 5 minute period - The game being unable to calculate a tree off in the distance. Just imagine being kneedeep in a dungeon in Skyrim, not having saved for an hour, being booted out because the cloud couldn't sync up an NPC picking it's nose in a town you haven't been in yet. How does this add to the game?

        So, well, long rant over - I'm a pretty big sceptic about this stuff. If i worked at MS, i don't see how it can work without seriously risking the experience your customers can have. The only way i can justify a move like this is because some manager would be convinced that this would reduce piracy and increase the possibility for targetted advertisements, plus another reason for pushing the Xbox Live Gold service. Justify for the company that is, not the customer.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 6:43 PM

        lol come on man

    • reply
      June 15, 2013 7:20 PM

      Why don't you fix your games freezing first on your new PS4 system hardware, than trying to compare your cloud computing to the real deal of xbox one. not even in the same level of computing from software side sony. fix your hardware first, than request Microsoft to come help you figure out how to improve your cloud computing and UI.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 7:21 PM

        [deleted]

        • reply
          June 15, 2013 7:27 PM

          he's thinking that the asspirates gameplay preview locking up at the sony e3 presentation is how the PS4 will handle all its games and thus its cloud capabilities too

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 7:27 PM

        ur stil hear

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 7:33 PM

        Can we just get this account banned?

        • reply
          June 15, 2013 7:35 PM

          Yes, let's just ban all dissenting opinions. Sounds like a great idea.

          • reply
            June 15, 2013 7:37 PM

            that's a pretty generous assessment of his post history

          • reply
            June 15, 2013 7:40 PM

            he's clearly a fucking troll come on

          • reply
            June 15, 2013 8:05 PM

            There's dissent, and then there's psychosis.

          • reply
            June 15, 2013 8:25 PM

            It's either a marketing account or an account that is posting too much made up information. Basically they are constantly lying, it's all they do. Yes, ban all of those accounts.

        • reply
          June 16, 2013 8:53 AM

          I second that motion!

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 7:37 PM

        At least they showed hardware. Microsoft didn't even bring one.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 7:43 PM

        HWATCHA GONNA DOOO when the XBONE and the largest cloud in the gaming industry RUNS WILD ON YOU

        http://i.imgur.com/Kp1tcqx.jpg

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 7:49 PM

        "Fix your hardware first".

        Yeah like Microsoft did.

        Good news everyone! The new Xbox will never red ring. That issue has been solved 100%. It'll never happen again. Guaranteed.

        • reply
          June 16, 2013 10:59 AM

          Support ticket: My 360 has the RROD.

          Technician note: Removed lights from console.

          Status: Fixed.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 7:54 PM

        Were the ps4 demos freezing? I remember the thread about the of the xbo demos crashing to desktop but not this.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 7:56 PM

        Why would Microsoft help Sony figure out cloud computing is what I'm wondering. Really makes you think.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 8:17 PM

        Hey, at least they had the balls to play on their dev kits and not higher than spec PCs while trying to pass it off as Xbox hardware. ;)

        The game is also MONTHS away and the crash was likely software, not something related to the hardware.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 8:21 PM

        what freezing games? The system isn't out yet

      • ArB legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
        reply
        June 15, 2013 8:42 PM

        Stand strong, finalSpart4n. Master Chief is saluting you from heaven.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 8:51 PM

        Dude, you cannot be real.

        My guess: in a couple of weeks you'll be outed as a character account by [fry], or be banned because you're actually that crazy.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 10:19 PM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 10:42 PM

        Wy don't you fix your mother being a whore son?

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 10:46 PM

        Yes, Finally someone understands the magnificence that is the wiiU.

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 11:04 PM

        hey look everybody it's finalSpart4n! <audience applause and laughter>

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 11:51 PM

        Yeah, they should have shown more pre-rendered videos instead. Fuck live demos and alpha software, who are they kidding with that shit??

      • reply
        June 16, 2013 6:15 AM

        I am an Xbox 360 fan but people like you embarrass me.

      • reply
        June 16, 2013 6:48 AM

        MS makes such awesome hardware I bought 3 xbox 360s!

        • reply
          June 16, 2013 8:18 PM

          only 3 I made it to five if you include the upgrade version.

      • reply
        June 16, 2013 7:21 AM

        Who is "you"? Who is he addressing that post to?

      • reply
        June 16, 2013 10:15 AM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        June 16, 2013 10:55 AM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        June 16, 2013 11:00 AM

        I've almost narrowed down who this is a character account of. I need a few more clues.

    • reply
      June 15, 2013 8:51 PM

      I want more Blast Processing!

    • reply
      June 15, 2013 9:21 PM

      Tell me it can play .MKVs and I'll probably buy one within a year of release

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 9:29 PM

        I doubt either PS4 or xbone can play useful formats

        • reply
          June 15, 2013 9:56 PM

          The PS3 can already handle MKV containers at least, the issue is with the codecs used. H264 and AAC are pretty standard these days so I would be surprised if either console had trouble with them, though I'm sure stuff like softsubs will still be a lost cause.

          • reply
            June 16, 2013 8:33 AM

            Yeah I thought both consoles can already play MKV?

      • reply
        June 15, 2013 10:39 PM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        June 16, 2013 8:16 AM

        It's embarrassing that a raspberry pi can handle these things so well but a console can't.

        • reply
          June 16, 2013 8:24 AM

          dunno if that's fair. how old are the consoles again? are you suggesting they were designed to play back homebrewed media rips and torrented files?

        • reply
          June 16, 2013 8:28 AM

          Its not that it cant, its that it WONT. You seriously think ms and sony can get deals with media companies if their devices are also the number one way to play pirated content? Nope.avi

          • reply
            June 16, 2013 10:16 AM

            People said the same about MP3 players at one point. Then someone realised despite the *IAA's being pissy bitches there was plenty of money to be made in actually providing people what they want (despite what it may be used for) that it became a huge market.

            Lots of torrents are in mp4 format now anyway, it's only really the Blu-Ray HD rips and people making their own libraries who are heavy into MKV's. Seems a silly feature to leave out just because of how it might be used, and it's not as if they are really stopping that stuff being played on their devices thanks to how Windows has plenty of programs available to transcode on the fly.

    • reply
      June 15, 2013 10:37 PM

      All this cloud marketing hype is pissing me off. As an end-consumer, I don't give a fuck about their server-side infrastructure, as long as everything just works. Whether they've got physical servers or some scalable array of virtual servers really doesn't concern me.

    • reply
      June 15, 2013 11:11 PM

      It's amusing how dedicated servers are now being used as some sort of marketing thing. Look, we have the power of THE CLOUD!!!!11

      The best compute thing this can be used for is converting your captured game footage into another video format. And even that probably won't happen due to the upload bandwidth required.

    • reply
      June 16, 2013 9:03 AM

      Sounds like a new arms race.

    • reply
      June 16, 2013 9:23 AM

      this cloud stuff wont be mentioned again after the initial launch games

      • reply
        June 16, 2013 9:25 AM

        [deleted]

        • reply
          June 17, 2013 5:29 AM

          they have to also convince a bunch of developers to use it & pay MS for the privilege

        • reply
          June 17, 2013 7:10 PM

          I think they are counting all their Azure virtual server stuff in that - most of which would exist anyway for the push they are doing on that end. Its like if amazon said the kindle has access to the sum power of EC2/AWS - technically it could via some software, but thats not the sole use of that hardware.

      • reply
        June 16, 2013 10:52 AM

        That makes no sense at all. Companies don't put time and money into infrastructure just to abandon it usually.

      • reply
        June 17, 2013 1:12 PM

        You underestimate how much marketers like the words "the cloud".

    • Ziz legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      June 16, 2013 7:08 PM

      I look forward to the day are PCs are in the cloud.

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