The Xbox One's cloud computing feature may have been dismissed by gamers, but there's at least one developer who thinks it's a welcome addition.
Avalanche Studio Chief Technology Officer Linus Blomberg shared with VideoGamer that cloud computing gives Microsoft an advantage going into next-gen. He said:
It's perfect for open-world games like ours as it enables techniques to make the game worlds more alive and social, such as persistence and asynchronous multiplayer features. We are already using server-side computations in our PC hunting game theHunter, so that's nothing new for us as a concept. But Microsoft's solution may allow us to do this more efficiently and to a greater [extent].
Cloud computing will allow for games to perform calculations remotely, increasing the potential of the Xbox One without altering its hardware. Microsoft will install 300,000 virtual servers before the console's launch to support the feature.
The PS4 might not have cloud computing, but it uses several cloud-based features such as back-up saves, and more importantly has a much more capable GPU; assets that are much easier to gauge the benefits of at this point. Microsoft hasn't demonstrated the potential of cloud computing, but you can bet it will as we near the release date of Xbox One. If it wants to be victorious it'll need to confidently show how Kinect and cloud computing are going to compete with the PS4's raw power going into the future.
