Xbox One: Microsoft May Be Lying About Its Cloud

Microsoft may be lying about its Xbox One “cloud.”

The Xbox One manufacturer has been going on and on about its cloud and the “infinite power” therein. The developer behind Braid and The Witness begs to differ.

According to Microsoft, the Xbox One cloud is supposed to make for enhanced, superior games and Jonathan Blow says it’s all a lie. In a statement on Twitter this past week, Jonathan Blow said, “More cloud processing BS. … Someone please call their bluff on this.

Jonathan Blow was of course referring to a recent article from Joystiq, where Microsoft claims its cloud architecture can pre-calculate elements like lighting and physics modeling, leading to increased in-game performance. Apparently they say they are able to do this through the use of 300,000 servers which do everything the console itself isn’t doing. Microsoft stated, “[for] every Xbox One available in your living room we’ll have three of those devices in the cloud available.”

Jonathan Blow counters this, explaining why he feels Microsoft is spinning us a line of crap:

“Also, someone please ask if these fabled 300,000 servers are real hardware, or just the total size of Windows Azure (which then implies XBL would only ever get a portion of that). To put it more concretely: a journalist could compute the installation and yearly maintenance cost for 300,000 servers, and then ask Microsoft where that VERY LARGE chunk of money is coming from (And how it could possibly make business sense for a game console). … I can spin up 10,000 virtual servers per host. They would just all suck. Saying 300k when they are virtual is a lie. You can’t make 300k servers available without kicking all other customers off the service.”

More cloud processing BS: joystiq.com/2013/05/24/rep… Someone please call their bluff on this.

— Jonathan Blow (@Jonathan_Blow) May 25, 2013

This might not be the only thing Microsoft may be lying about with its Xbox One. Thus far, we have seen a lot of confusing answers to questions that should have been wrapped up at last week’s reveal.

Do you think Microsoft is lying about the Xbox One being made more powerful with its cloud servers?