developers using azure cloud computing?

Servers spin-up when necessary? I really don't know how to respond to that.

 

It's devs/publishers choice to use Azure or not.Respawn use it for Titanfall.

Most Microsoft games use it or will..... (Forza,Halo,Fable,Crackdown,....)

But not only for games,where do you think your Upload clips are saved ?....

It's early,but we will see more games and features using it.

 

@Biscuitz0r If game A (Titanfall) isn't using any resources then game B (Fable Legends) will make use of the same resources. Maybe you should do more research on scalable servers?

 

You need only to look at Cloudgine / MS Studios at the moment, developing Crackdown 3:

"We created Cloudgine with the ambitious goal of demonstrating that Cloud Gaming has much more to offer beyond the traditional pixel streaming of existing games. By leveraging the immense power available within data centres, computationally intensive game
components such as physics and A.I. can be supercharged in order to deliver game experiences that go well beyond what any console or PC can offer now or in the future."

The BUILD video showed the destruction possible and was taken directly from an early Crackdown 3 build, the CGI trailer was about the games ambitions. Phil Spencer has promised a working demo.

Don't listen to people saying 300K azure servers aren't enough, that's crazy talk. Azure runs one of the largest server farms on the planet, which runs ALL of Microsofts cloud based services, the servers are scalable to dynamically control load. A single
game with 1mil+ players isn't going to touch the capability available. I say this as someone who's built and ran servers.

All that said, I'm still skeptical as to how far the technology can be applied, but am equally excited about the possibilites. We'll have our answer in real world working example in 2015, or early 2016.

 

Azure attracts over 1,000 new customers per day. I don't think some people understand the scale involved here. It's already a billion dollar per year business for Microsoft and it's growing rapidly, hence their continued investment in it. It can spin up
and spin down resources as required, as mentioned. It's not like they say "OK, so we need to make sure we can handle 50,000 Titanfall players at the same time" and then all of those resources are constantly up and running, nor is it like a traditional online
server setup for gaming where when the player count drops, the servers are "turned off" (i.e. used for something else). There's no need for that.

 

OP - are you wanting to know about just game developers or all software developers? You've not made it clear.

Azure is massively popular in the general software development field - apparently 50% of Fortune 500 companies have some level of development using Azure. It's seriously big business and it's only going to get bigger.

 

"Servers spin-up when necessary? I really don't know how to respond to that."

That's pretty much it really, they build a large physical infrastructure and then use virtualization to "spin up" server capacity on the fly.

 

Sorry for the late reply. A short shift to cover breaks turned into a longer one when a person 'forgot' when
they were due back.

What threw me off was the terminology used. Spinning up is not something I'd use when describing servers.

Still a virtual server is always running, always taking up a bit of processing power, always using a bit of bandwidth. It's a smaller scale to be sure but if you could just keep a virtual server idling in the background forever, companies like EA would never
need to shut-down the online for a game.

Also that virtual server still needs to be maintained, to ensure that when it is called upon that it responds in the correct manner. You really just can't leave them unattended and hope for the best.

 

Sorry to go a little off topic.

Does anyone know how many servers EA actually have?...... Just curious.

 

Even EA doesn't know....

 

From some of the E.A. games I've played on their servers...I would guess 3! Lol.

Peace, J.R.

 

Lol..... 3 servers. I kind of expected an answer a little more generous.

 

@biscuitz what he means by spin up is, that when titanfall has to load up a game of multiplayer it contacts the server, and the server loads up a virtual server. when that virtual server is no longer needed the server automatically dumps it. the reason this
is a big deal is that developers no longer have to pay for a certain number of servers to run their games. The host server automatically scales to compensate the ammount of activity that the game is producing. Microsoft is a business behemoth and it knows
how to make money. They know that providing Free server hosting and server computing to all developers will increase developer game production on their platform which in turn pays for the cost of keeping servers running. Now as far as cloud computing goes,
Microsoft has built a infrastructure that allows developers to to program their games to use azure to handle pysics and ai processing. This is unique to azure in that others server providers such at amazon do not provide this level of integration. Renting
servers from amazon for a multiplayer game such as kill zone doesnt allow for this type of server computing. So Microsoft has allowed develpers to divert tasks, which are normally done on the console, to their servers, which frees up the actual console to
do more computing than it normally could. Alot of the processes running in the background of a game are able to be run through the cloud also, like anything that has to do with the data a player produces while playing, such as # of kills, # of kill specific
to each weapon, what weapons or vehicles the player uses the most and so on and so on. This type of computing known as statistics computing, is normally done on the console and sent to the developers(if the player was connected to the consoles online service)
those developers would then turn that data into a part of their very own profile data on their website with achievements and unlocks and tropheys for their members. Now Microsoft has provided all developers who are developing on their console to use these
servers for those very same things that they would normally have to program their game to do on that console and free'd up developer resourses for other things. by not having to spend money on dedicated servers, which is extremely expensive, they have more
money to work with. Developers no longer have to worry about server maintenence or player hosted servers crashing because the player hosts internet band is being used up by others in the house hold using laptops, tablets, phones, and whatever else they have
that hogs internet bandwidth. IMO Microsoft has once again showed sony and nentindo that Microsoft is the innovator of online gameplay. Im sure that when sony releases the ps5 they will have a mass of server farms to provide what microsoft is providing, at
this very moment, to their developers and customers. I understand why people who bought a ps4 believing that there was a clear advantage in sonys corner, are mad. I mean the internets raved about how powerful the ps4 was and at a lower price rate, and then
they find out that microsoft had the more powerful machine all along, but in a different way than what previous generations equated power. I would be *** to had i bought a ps4 and found out that now most of the computing could be done on a server and that
in doing so would free up the hardware to function better than anyone could have possibly imagine. I would be *** that sony just didnt have the resouses to catch up to what microsoft has achieved with the $10 billion they spent on this infrastructior.

 

[quote user="Burst Axe"]Maybe you should do more research on scalable servers? [/quote]

Says the guy who thinks servers "spin up"... So do they "spin up" when I launch Netflix too?

(sorry, I couldn't resist )

 

halo master chief collection use it so will halo 5 crackdown will and forza 5 and horizon also fable and titanfall