Wednesday, October 10th 2018
Microsoft's xCloud is a Push Towards Game Streaming Future, Powered by AMD
Microsoft has announced their xCloud initiative, a game streaming effort that looks to bridge the gap between local and stream-based gaming. xCloud is looking to bring true, platform-agnostic gaming with much lower bandwidth requirements due to a number of technologies being researched and worked on by Microsoft. Chief among these are low-latency networking, encoding, and decoding advances - all crucial parts of the puzzle for solving latency and poor image quality issues. xCloud aims to allow for "high-quality experiences at the lowest possible bitrates that work across the widest possible networks" - with 4G and 5G support. For now, the test version of xCloud only requires a minimum 10 Mbps connection, which is already very impressive in abstract - though of course it would require more info on the rendering specs being delivered to the recipient's system for deeper analysis.
One big takeaway here is that this xCloud initiative is fully powered by AMD's own hardware - as it should be. Using AMD custom hardware such as that found within Microsoft's Xbox consoles takes away the work and investment in building even more emulation capabilities on a server level, which would only add additional overhead to the streaming service. By using AMD's own custom hardware, Microsoft circumvents this issue - but entrenches itself even more on AMD's own product portfolio, both now and in the foreseeable future.
Microsoft will be rolling out xCloud in steps over its Azure data centers worldwide, throughout 54 'regions' and 140 countries. Microsoft has already rolled out its custom server racks into one of its data centers in the US, and public trials for the game streaming service are scheduled to begin in 2019.
Sources:
Microsoft Blogs, via PCGamesN
One big takeaway here is that this xCloud initiative is fully powered by AMD's own hardware - as it should be. Using AMD custom hardware such as that found within Microsoft's Xbox consoles takes away the work and investment in building even more emulation capabilities on a server level, which would only add additional overhead to the streaming service. By using AMD's own custom hardware, Microsoft circumvents this issue - but entrenches itself even more on AMD's own product portfolio, both now and in the foreseeable future.
For AMD, this is amazing news - more volume of parts being shipped rather than just for the console market means increased revenues, but more importantly, this is a big win in the server space for the company. AMD's custom silicon strategy started with a market penetration outlook of offering the cheapest custom x86 and graphics IP technologies, but now? AMD has made itself the only player in this game, and everybody knows the first step to remain relevant is to make one virtually irreplaceable. I can't really overstate how important this could be for AMD's long-term future - they're crossing the bridge between offering localized hardware solutions (game consoles) through to the (for some) unavoidable future of game streaming.
41 Comments on Microsoft's xCloud is a Push Towards Game Streaming Future, Powered by AMD
If we do not look at the bandwidth requirement, the latency added is simple:
- The time network traffic takes to send input and get video back is basically a round-trip latency, this is ping to server.
- Video stream encoding adds some latency. From link @notb provided above Nvidia's hardware encoder does that in 5ms, AMD's in about 16ms. If Microsoft gets a custom or customized encoder, this can be done in <5ms.
There is a nice site for measuring Azure latency:
www.azurespeed.com/
I am getting around 80ms average latency to closest data centers from my work network (which is managed and probably going through a site-wide VPN).
That would put total latency added by streaming to <100ms.
What about single player games? It doesn’t add up for me. We have enthusiasts on this very forum who have crappy internet.
Internet has become an informal utility, but is being formalized already. I don't know how it looks in US, but in Europe and Asia countries are working on a guaranteed Internet access.
In Poland, where I live, the plan states everyone will have 30Mbps by the end of 2020. Of course this is relevant for rural areas, not cities.It's very unlikely that local gaming will disappear in next few decades. You'll still be able to buy a copy and install it on your PC. Don't worry.
This isn't true for Europe or developed Asian countries.
Also, what exactly do you mean by "lacking"? We would need some numbers to make a proper comparison.
There are some rankings available online and US average isn't that bad (20th place worldwide):
www.cable.co.uk/broadband/speed/worldwide-speed-league/
You can safely say that if you don't live in a large city, the chances of decent ISP options are low at best.
Also the approach is different.
I mentioned that many countries are going to make Internet access a utility, i.e. you'll be guaranteed to have some bandwidth. So the state will either build infrastructure in rural areas or pay private companies to do it. This is communism for huge part of Americans, isn't it? :pWell, let's be honest. You live in a small town. It's NL, so all villages are basically suburbs of few major cities and they're actually great to live. But you can't expect luxuries of cities. Fibre is expensive. Always will be. Even in large cities no ISP will voluntarily lay fibre to individual houses and small blocks.
On the other hand, since NL is basically cities and suburbs, I bet you have excellent 4G (soon 5G) coverage. Well... trade-offs everywhere. :-)
What you've described seems fairly OK. Single cable ISP is a typical situation in small towns and rural areas. I wouldn't expect more. Is their offer unacceptable? What are we talking about? 200 Mbps? Less?Small local projects became extinct in Poland years ago. Cultural reasons. We Poles prefer buying from large brands at this point. We like big ISPs, large shopping malls, large franchise restaurants and so on. Most of Western Europe is past this period already.
You can't just be a pro gamer and use a Logitech MX mouse or a business notebook anymore! And imagine someone coming to a gaming event in a Lacoste sweater.
It's all just social and marketing pressure making people look and behave in particular way. Gaming is a cultural phenomenon now, not just a casual hobby.You know this is exactly what people said 10 years ago about high-quality video streaming? :)
Also, you're making a mistake by extrapolating your particular needs. "Masses" don't need low latency and UHD. They'll be fine with what streaming offers already. And they'll be able to try quality that their hardware can't provide.
There will obviously be a niche that streaming is not good enough for. A high-end hardware will always give you lower lags and so on, so it'll be favoured by those with urge for best available experience.
For gaming, there are fár better tools available. Consoles being a low-cost entry point and if you want faster hardware, you can even buy an updated version of it. And if that doesn't satisfy you, you're already into the PC Gaming niche of high quality experiences, which is exactly the niche cloud stream can't cover apart from the graphical aspect. But: those same masses that play on consoles now can't see the difference between 1080p upscale and native 4K. See how the target market is super tiny now?
The real target market for streaming is our age group of 'no time for gaming' 30+ of age that still like to pick up something from time to time but don't want to get into high end hardware again. And the promising target market for cloud gaming is probably that failing idea of 'being able to use content on any device' which opens it up to everyone anywhere, in theory. Yes, its a fun idea in theory, but then we come upon the practical limitations. When in fact 'any device' really just means catering to mobile.
Call me a man of limited vision, but this is just one of those developments that I really don't see going anywhere. This is not a pure technology/development problem, its similar to VR in that sense: there are practical reasons why it just won't ever truly take off for consumers.