Microsoft Azure & Sony team up, rumored also Nintendo

[A Black Falcon]

So, yesterday Sony and Microsoft announced that they had come to a deal to use some Microsoft Azure cloud streaming architecture on Sony's back-end.  I guess Sony is giving up on their own streaming tech, that they've been working on for so many years now... though apparently previously they were using Amazon streaming backend tech before, so they're going to be moving to MS despite being Microsoft's competitor.  It's a bit odd, but they're both huge companies so okay.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...ation-team

This article says that Sony didn't tell their console division about this before signing the deal.  How nice of you, Sony...


Meanwhile, another rumor, following on one of various Microsoft + Nintendo rumors that have been floating around since Microsoft decided to start releasing Switch versions of some of their first-party titles (Cuphead, Hellblade, Xbox integration on Switch and such), says that Nintendo is also looking to use Azure tech on the Switch: https://www.resetera.com/threads/david-g...ce.117858/

So yeah, I guess for game consoles Azure is winning big over Google, when it comes to cloud streaming technology.  As for the MS + Nintendo stuff though, it'll be very interesting to  see if anything comes of this... E3 could be interesting (in a good way or bad), or not.  We'll see in a few weeks, E3 is only three weeks away!

[Dark Jaguar]

Translation: Oh no oh NO Google's coming to eat our lunch! Hurry! Armistice!

I still don't really care for streaming my games. I'd rather own them and mod them like crazy, and never have to worry about a copyright deal meaning I lose the title song of the game, or losing the game entirely.

However, this may point toward that unified console future finally on the horizon. What may be next? A unified console architecture that every company simply builds to that spec, making games inter-operable and erasing company lines when games come out? Well, I think in the long run the industry will have to do that some day to survive, but I don't think the PS5/XBoxTwo are going to be that generation. Maybe in the one that comes after.

[etoven]

Well say goodbye to your game nite then, all that sounds horrible.
They honestly should both ditch there craptastic networks respectfully and move to AWS if uptime is a concern.

Neither has a very good track record for uptime. But I would have to say azure is probably a bit worse.

[Dark Jaguar]

Sony's had more downtime than MS, but neither are what I could call unreliable. I can count on one hand the number of days XBox Live was down last year. That seems pretty good to me. I mean, they're games. They don't need a 5 9 rating.

[A Black Falcon]

Translation: Oh no oh NO Google's coming to eat our lunch!  Hurry! Armistice!

That's probably a lot of it, isn't it... good point.

I still don't really care for streaming my games.  I'd rather own them and mod them like crazy, and never have to worry about a copyright deal meaning I lose the title song of the game, or losing the game entirely.

I don't think I've played a streamed game.  Even beyond the ownership issue, which is a pretty big deal, and the even bigger issue of how this allows games to permanently not exist the moment a company wants to stop selling them since there will be no local backups of the games, which is the biggest issue, there's also that any remote connection is sure to have more lag than a local one!  Between those three things, I don't want to stream games, I want them locally.  Game companies in the future would probably rather we stream, though, to get total control and not allow silly things like "ownership" anymore...

However, this may point toward that unified console future finally on the horizon.  What may be next?  A unified console architecture that every company simply builds to that spec, making games inter-operable and erasing company lines when games come out?  Well, I think in the long run the industry will have to do that some day to survive, but I don't think the PS5/XBoxTwo are going to be that generation.  Maybe in the one that comes after.

Yeah, the PS5 and next Xbox are sounding like they'll be even more similar than ever, and that's saying something with how similar the PS4 and Xbox One are... and if Nintendo uses MS streaming tech too, for something?  The platforms definitely do seem to be converging.  Maybe we even will see some kind of unified console architecture.  It'd still surprise me, but I guess it isn't impossible.

Well say goodbye to your game nite then, all that sounds horrible.
They honestly should both ditch there craptastic networks respectfully and move to AWS if uptime is a concern.

Neither has a very good track record for uptime. But I would have to say azure is probably a bit worse.

I know you've said that you don't think much of Azure, but either Sony and Nintendo disagree, or MS is giving them good deals financially...

[Dark Jaguar]

Latency, and customization are other big issues. The level of bizarre customization I can do to games on my own PC is way more than I'll ever get from streamed games.