Are we prepared for the future in the cloud that Xbox One presents us?

Both Sony and Microsoft consoles have already been presented, and each one has put two very clear points on the table Microsoft for its part he wants us to become more friends with the cloud (a separate question is whether the method used is correct or not) and Sony meanwhile has gone for a more classic idea of ​​a game console, where we can do whatever we want with the games and that it is not mandatory to be on the internet to use it.

It will be at the discretion of each one about which idea is more in line with our tastes, but Microsoft and the people behind Forza Motosport 5 have shown us a first concept where they take advantage of this new ecosystem in the cloud that the Xbox One wants to offer us.

The cloud will play for us

For those of you who are not aware, the game Forza Motosport 5 has a tool called Drivatar. As we play, everything we do will be saved to a file that will eventually be uploaded to a cloud server. Drivatar will then process it and draw conclusions such as our playstyle, how we move, and more.

And while we are out of the game, Drivatar will be able to play games with other players, imitating our way of playing. And when we enter it again, we will be rewarded for the results that Drivatar has obtained, which in a certain way are our results.

Undoubtedly, what they want to offer us is something interesting, but it is different, and as everyone knows, what is different is sometimes difficult to digest. Are we prepared for this kind of thing? What if players don't want a computer to play their games for them?

And this can't only happen in Forza Motosport 5, let's imagine this being taken elsewhere For example in an MMO in where the characters do tasks that maybe we don't do, such as looking for some particular resources, or in an FPS game, where our character will play games alone and will go up in rank.

In the end, we could remove the “annoying” part of having to level up or get some particular resources so that we can focus on the important things, like tournaments, player battles and the like.

Having the possibility of being able to use the cloud for this type of thing opens the door to many ideas and alternatives, however, developers must know well what is what the players want, to be able to hit the key.

Let the cloud do the graphics processing

Microsoft not only wants to use the cloud to be able to create these types of features, but also wants developers to use this service to be able to send some of the graphics processing to the Microsoft servers.

In theory, graphics rendering in the cloud would load effects that aren't happening directly there, and then feed the results back to the console, which would then apply them. This would increase the graphical quality of games, allowing other computers to do cloud-heavy effect uploads, and the console only applying the results.

Although the concept is interesting, many questions are raised. I don't know how the internet quality is in countries like Spain or Mexico, to name two random countries, but in Argentina we still have problems with disconnection or speed drop for a while.What happens if this happens while we are playing?.

Microsoft says that developers need to think smart in order to handle these issues and make them pass without affecting the experience. In addition, he also comments that these cloud servers are ready to process data that is insensitive with respect to internet latency, that is, that it is possible that this data is very small and that it does not correspond to something important in the game or that it needs to be updated at that time, such as collisions between objects.

It seems that for this new technology to be included in the console, has to be well studied and that there is mutual support between Microsoft and developersBeing something new, Microsoft should provide documentation and help developers to get the most out of it. And of course, developers should provide feedback to Microsoft so they can improve the service.

In short, if we have a fast and stable internet, these cloud processing servers can offer us interesting things. But if we have something kind of loose, we're going to depend a bit on the developers, so they use the cloud in the most effective way.

Now your opinion

The Xbox One seems to offer two pretty big things with the cloud, Could gaming tend to shift to things like what Drivatar offers with Forza Motosport 5? .

What do you think about processing in the cloud? Will developers be able to take advantage of this or will they stick with the formula simple and do all the calculations with the console?.