Cloud bullshit needs to stop, at least in the terms of it helping the game to render better visuals in real time. ~95% of the game rendering pipeline requires extremely fast access times, and the remaining 5% could receive help from cloud but it would not be much. Global Illumination states could be rendered on cloud and buffered to the console for later use [no one will notice if global lightning is off by 5 minutes of sun travel time], or cloud can work on "world AI" calculation for MMO/Skyrim type games. That means providing consoles with general AI states of groups of people [factions], not individual NPC-s. As for GI states, bluray is big and a lot of them can be stored there.
And for those who want for cloud to magically start ignoring lightspeed limit, packet loss, server load balance and start helping real rendering pipeline, you need to face reality. Killzone Shadowfall uses 6MB of RAM to calculate AI. Majority of those 6MB is refreshed every frame, which means that for 30fps game you need to have 180MB/s internet connection speed [or 1.4gbit, which is is faster than LAN controllers can provide in PS4/X1 console and your PC]. Of course, AI data can be smaller, but still, user that have perfect 8mbit [1MB/s] internet access all the time [no family memebers watching netflix on other device
] will recieve only 34 KB of data per each frame of 30fps game [half of that in 60fps game]. If the game can really take advantage from that measly ammount of data, sure, go for it. Users with data caps will also spend 3.5 GB of data per hour. Not cool.
Microsoft Studios corporate vice president Phil Spencer has clearly stated hard truth:
“Cloud is a really interesting place to invest and we're investing a ton in the cloud,” Spencer told IGN. “Whether cloud rendering ends up being the killer cloud feature, I'm a little skeptical that will be where game designers will actually see the promise of the cloud paying off in their games. We're seeing a lot of our studios putting that power toward the experience that's running locally on the Xbox One and how the combined capabilities of the device and servers in the sky create a more immersive experience."
http://ap.ign.com/en/news/6766/micro...-platform-play
As expected, cloud is great for managing communities and sharing data between devices, but its far away from directly helping rendering of the local games.
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