You’ll probably want to resign yourself to these kind of stories. The “Our machine is X times more powerful” story is a staple of pre-release next generation consoles and generally persists for a year or two after release too.
I’ve seen people casually claiming that the PlayStation 4 is 1.5 times more powerful than the Xbox One. Microsoft is claiming that the Xbox One is ten times more powerful than the Xbox 360. It’s all a bit silly but it serves a purpose: to give misinformed fanboys something to spout on forums. We suspect this claim will crop up in a few of the next gen console wars, despite how ridiculous it is.
A Spokesperson for Microsoft, Adam Pollington, has told an Australian site called Stevivor.com that the Xbox One makes clever use of The Cloud to augment its processing power. He claims, in what I really hope was just a throwaway number he plucked out of the air in passing conversation, that it makes the Xbox One’s processing power 40 times greater than the Xbox 360.
“It’s also been stated that the Xbox One is ten times more powerful than the Xbox 360, so we’re effectively 40 times greater than the Xbox 360 in terms of processing capabilities [using the cloud].” He said, after an interview that mostly just quotes the somewhat confused company line on things like always-on and used game sales.
Pollington went on to say “if you look to the cloud as something that is no doubt going to evolve and grow over time, it really spells out that there’s no limit to where the processing power of Xbox One can go.” That emphasis would go some way to implying that a constant internet connection – while perhaps not required – would be something that’s so beneficial so as to eventually become almost essential.
teflon
They’ve been saying that for every Xbox One, there’ll be the equivalent of three more X1’s in the cloud, which can be leveraged for additional processing on non-time constrained things.
It’s an interesting idea, but we’ll see how it actually pans out.
Peter Chapman
I think it’ll either kill their “300,000 servers” immediately or it’s junk PR bullet-point bullshit.
Very interesting idea, likely prohibitively expensive and probably completely unworkable on the scales they’re claiming. But we won’t know until everything’s been out in the wild for a year or more.
teflon
Think it was an EG article/interview thingy, where a guy explained that it could be a case where the console renders a scene until the cloud can catch up and provide more dynamic details. Or something…
He was talking about clouds or something.
Is this all just going to be elaborate procedurally generated clouds, with a fallback system so that if the internet cuts out you just have normal looking clouds?
Gamoc
I agree with your first sentence, it sounds like bollocks made up for PR or it’ll destroy their serves on release. Silly, really.
bmg_123
Right, of course, I guess they really do think everyone has an amazing connection. I don’t see myself downloading next-gen size assets on a 500kb/s connection and somehow enjoying the fact I am always connected. No thanks! Oh and of course 40x is complete rubbish, unless of course the 3 compute units assigned to each console in the cloud is better than the ones in the console itself…
SkyLion
This
Temascos
Sounds like a bit of waffle to me, not everyone will have the capability to go online with such bandwidth intensive stuff, and even if they did developers can’t exactly take full advantage of it save for First Parties.
And of course, even if it was true, there’s nothing stopping the PS4 as they have Gaikai at the ready to do the same sort of thing. Most gamers will be using just the hardware available in the box, not going for the online stuff.
bunimomike
You can throw God in a hamster wheel behind it but if it’s got lag over the internet, you iz fu**ed!
teflon
It won’t be for things where any latency would affect the actual gameplay.
ron_mcphatty
So what do you reckon it will be used for Tef? I never really understood what the servers did for Sim City, I suppose I’m a bit behind on my homework :)
bunimomike
Right, so that’s the turn-by-turn Strategy genre covered. Phew! :-P
kjkg
My penis is 20x bigger than my girlfriends….. :/
SkyLion
lol:p
samiro05
With the right internet sources it can be 40x bigger.
double-o-dave
Mine will evolve in time then eventually get used by the armed forces as a giant bio weapon shortly before conquering mankind and ruling the universe… bit like the Xbox One.
Porcupine_I
More numbers! Give us More numbers Microsoft! i want at least 20 exclusives instead of measly 15!
hazelam
and my apathy towards this figure is 24.845725486% greater than it was to any power comparisons last gen. ^_^
Bilbo_bobbins
Well my dick is bigger than yours so yeah !
Kennykazey
Power that’ll only be used to gather 40% more creepy information through Kinect.
KeRaSh
I call PR bullshit until they show us something that backs their claims.