A look into what Azure really costs the Xbox division

[Krakin 5,735]

19 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

Are you saying the flightsim community would be more on board with microtransactions than they would be with a small subscription?

I mean, I don't really hang here that often, but that certainly seems counter to my understanding. I could be wrong, who knows.

-Matt N

Microtransactions are frowned upon but they leave the end user with a choice in most applications. A mandatory subscription model takes away that choice. You want to fly? Then you HAVE to pay every month. This is why it is only tolerated in MMOs. The console community will NEVER be onboard with a sub model for a game like FS2020.

[MattNischan 3,778]

21 minutes ago, Krakin said:

I'm amazed that you watched the video and came away with that. Phil Spencer is the head of Xbox and in another video he actually said the cost of piggybacking on Azure is "cheap". In the video posted he said the cement is already cast, the air conditioning is in place and the staff to keep it running is already hired. With all of that in place it's just a simple matter of using what's already available. You could waste time with your speculative calculations or just listen to the man paying the bills. It's up to you.

I guess we just see it differently, which is fine.

He's talking about MS already owning the datacenters and having admins and NOCs onsite, which is definitely true. You do get to share that cost and those costs are relatively fixed per datacenter. But xCloud is not running on top of Azure. It's just running in the same datacenter. xCloud is not using Azure's compute system or anything like that; Spencer makes it clear that they're deploying entirely new hardware, which, on the side, has the benefit of not needing to be put in a new datacenter or require additional admin infrastructure, because those facilities already exist. And he's not wrong: piggybacking on the datacenter space that MS already built out for Azure is indeed very cheap in comparison to building a brand new set of global datacenters just for game streaming. However, the platform is entirely different: xCloud needs dedicated hardware because games need dedicated GPUs, and thus Spencer isn't talking at all about running on Azure in the sense that it seems like you're implying. And the hardware investment for xCloud is actually enormous, just like it is for Stadia and Playstation Now.

That's not what Asobo is doing at all. They're running machine learning in Azure proper, on the cloud computing infrastructure, the same thing you or I get when we make an Azure account and start creating Azure Machine Learning Services. Those machines are thousands per month each.

I've already spoken to what I believe the base cost to MS is of their cloud service, so I won't go into that again.

-Matt N

[Krakin 5,735]

55 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

That's not what Asobo is doing at all. They're running machine learning in Azure proper, on the cloud computing infrastructure, the same thing you or I get when we make an Azure account and start creating Azure Machine Learning Services. Those machines are thousands per month each.

Ummm Azure is not just machine learning over the cloud. Azure is Microsoft's cloud infrastructure. It covers everything. xCloud is most certainly being powered by Azure. I see why you would say what you did because it lends to your opinion but it just isn't the reality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Azure

[Scottoest 1,561]

12 hours ago, KillerKlient said:

It's not a voodoo word, but I find is very irritating that everyone goes on to talk about how expensive Azure and bing data is (when they don't know the slightest thing about it) and then go onto saying there will have to be a subscription model lol.  Yes it's expensive, but so is a traditional data center for multiplayer games - how are so many tripple A game titles running their servers without subscriptions?.  Azure and bing data is not exclusively used by MSFS, when Microsoft invests in these projects, they get their money back through loads of other projects that use those services.  The fact that MS owns them, means they can provide it to themselves at the lowest cost price.

Few things:

1) Traditional multiplayer games don't have servers that operate indefinitely.  In fact, if a game isn't particularly popular, servers can sometimes be shut off within a year.

2) Many games actually deliver multiplayer via some form of largely P2P connection, which costs the publisher nothing.

3) An increasing number of multiplayer games use microtransactions to earn ongoing income, something I assume no one wants to see come to Flight Simulator.

4) It sounds like in the case of MSFS, Azure is doing more than just serving data - it's also doing some heavy computational work on it's end.  In a traditional multiplayer game, the server isn't delivering the actual world map to you either - it's basically just feeding your client a series of updates on the state of all of the players in the game.  That's a major increase in bandwidth.

I think focusing on whether it's "expensive" for Microsoft to use Azure, is sorta irrelevant as to whether they will opt for that model.  Personally, my expectation is either a modestly priced monthly cost to access the "live" version of the sim (like $5 a month) that will include access to all future Asobo-created content for the sim as part of it.  This would justify a business case for Microsoft continuing to pay Asobo to work on the sim in the years after release as well, considering a hardcore flight sim is unlikely to be a 30-million selling mainstream hit or something. Or perhaps they could roll access in with Game Pass.

Personally, if they offered a simple $5/month sub option for the live servers, that included a decent stream of new work from Asobo each year (new planes, expansions, custom airport assets, etc.), AND the finished sim turns out to be everything we hope it is, I'd be happy to pay it.

At any rate, we know nothing right now.  Microsoft straight up said they didn't know about pricing or sub models or whatever, at the September preview event.  The sim isn't at the point where they are addressing the business aspects of it yet.  I'm sure they will thoroughly take the temperature of the sim audience on forums like these, in determining what to do, because they seem very aware of and sensitive to Microsoft's perception in the flight sim community, and not wanting to upset that.

Edited October 30, 2019 by Scottoest

[b737800 470]

It is a fallacy to think that making use of unused equipment in a datacentre has no cost associated with it. Unless the datacentre owners purchased equipment that they never needed, in which case they would be out of business if they kept doing it, that unused equipment is there for a reason. It is there for resilience / redundancy. It is there for peak demand usage, which becomes leaner with economies of scale.

As soon as it is used for something else on an ongoing basis it has to be replaced to cover the original need. If not, it wouldn't have been purchased in the first place.

What you don't have to do is build new datacentres, employ and train more staff (although the datacentre might depending on current levels, and they still need to get paid), add new air-con, negotiate new power and bandwidth contracts, add new fire suppression systems, dig up all the roads around the building to ensure all the duplicated utilities have different entry points, buy expensive generators and massive UPS systems and add all the n+1s because that has already been done. Hence it is much cheaper and much faster to get to market if that infrastructure is in place.

Even the space in the racks would cost at the point the datacentre was full because you've removed the ability to sell it to an external customer.

[Krakin 5,735]

@b737800 you say traditional multiplayer does not do computational work but I've already mentioned Crackdown 3. Did you miss that or chose to completely ignore it in your speculation? $5 per month for FS2020? Really? I can get Game Pass Ultimate for $4.99. Who in their right mind is going to think that's a good deal? I'll tell you who. People who are out of touch with the way the gaming industry works. For 10 bucks a month people are already streaming entire games via PS Now from a library of over 700 games....

[MattNischan 3,778]

15 hours ago, Krakin said:

Ummm Azure is not just machine learning over the cloud. Azure is Microsoft's cloud infrastructure. It covers everything. xCloud is most certainly being powered by Azure.

Dude, I work with Azure all the time; we do probably close to a million a year in Azure. I know exactly what Azure is and what it is not. I chose the Azure Machine Learning Service example as an indicator of the type of resource Asobo would be using and a generic cost point illustrator.

This is a goofy syntactical argument and I'm not sure what the bone to pick is. When it is said that my website, or my application, or my network, or my database is running on or powered by Azure, nobody means that they bought hardware and then put it in Azure datacenters, because that option is available to nobody except Microsoft. So, to say that Azure powers xCloud is correct in the sense that it runs on the same shared datacenter infrastructure Microsoft has that Azure also runs on, but it is not correct in the sense that it is using any of Azure as the software defined infrastructure, services, and computing platform, which is the only way the public can use it.

It's not really a significant distinction, honestly, except for distinguishing Spencer's meaning here. He doesn't mean that for MS Azure as a software defined computing and infrastructure platform is cheap to build xCloud on, because they actually have racks of xCloud specific hardware in the datacenters (seen in that video), and I absolutely 100% guarantee you that is not what Asobo means when they say Azure is powering their solution. Asobo is using the same software defined computing and infrastructure the rest of us are.

-Matt N

[Krakin 5,735]

From the launch of the Xbox One, MS made it clear that they wanted to make use of the cloud to take some work off their consoles and thus improve performance. They've done this with a few games already....no subscription....

FS 2020 is not a MMO! I don't know how many times I have to say it. It's ongoing development is NOTHING like continuously keeping a game balanced, creating new characters, maps, daily events, expansions, voice acting, writing etc. It just isn't and saying we won't welcome microtransactions but we'll be ok with the subscription is just RIDICULOUS. Fallout 76 just added an OPTIONAL subscription. I invite you to go check out the backlash that brought on. If I get study level add-on aircraft from MS I will gladly pay a little extra for it. At least I'd have a choice

[Krakin 5,735]

11 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

 

Well you're insisting there's going to be a sub because of all that computational work for one game. Pray tell then, why aren't services like PS Now and Stadia a heck of a lot more expensive? I mean not only are the games being run on the blades but they're streaming the ENTIRE experience to the end user. In fact, with Stadia you can buy the game outright and stream it anywhere for FREE...what!? That goes completely against what you've been saying all this time!

[b737800 470]

22 minutes ago, Krakin said:

@b737800 you say traditional multiplayer does not do computational work but I've already mentioned Crackdown 3. Did you miss that or chose to completely ignore it in your speculation? $5 per month for FS2020? Really? I can get Game Pass Ultimate for $4.99. Who in their right mind is going to think that's a good deal? I'll tell you who. People who are out of touch with the way the gaming industry works. For 10 bucks a month people are already streaming entire games via PS Now from a library of over 700 games....

Excuse me? Are you pointing your wrath in the right direction?

[MattNischan 3,778]

2 minutes ago, Krakin said:

Well you're insisting there's going to be a sub because of all that computational work for one game. Pray tell then, why aren't services like PS Now and Stadia a heck of a lot more expensive? I mean not only are the games being run on the blades but they're streaming the ENTIRE experience to the end user. In fact, with Stadia you can buy the game outright and stream it anywhere for FREE...what!? That goes completely against what you've been saying all this time!

I think you're angry at the wrong guy or something (I'm not sure why you're angry at all, honestly, this is just a web forum). I never said that a sub was guaranteed, I was just pointing out that it would be well within the realm of possibility (and certainly not unfair) because of the ongoing costs involved. If you recall, my personal opinion was that they're trying to pitch it inside the company as something they can do as a one time purchase. I hope they succeed, myself, but I wouldn't be too disappointed either way.

Honestly, it's good you brought up the pricing of cloud game streaming, because it actually illustrates my point. All these cloud streaming services have super high upfront costs, where they need to install thousands of rackmount versions of XBox, or PS, or custom Linux hardware (Stadia). But their recurring costs are basically just bandwidth, which, yes, is not at all zero, but they have very little in the way of development costs compared to a game, and nearly zero cloud compute costs. And streaming a game at 1080 is not any more bandwidth heavy than Netflix, and they don't have to rent Azure compute time to do it, the streaming hardware is on the blade already. Plus, the potential user base is crazy large in comparison to the FS user base, and that's really the biggest difference of all. There are 46M XBox Ones installed, 112M PS4s. You get to amortize your large upfront costs over a very big pool of subscribers (you hope, that's the risk/reward game they're all playing right now).

And Stadia is not a different model at all. Because you have to buy the game through Google, they get a cut just like all the other game marketplaces, so they make $3-5 per game, and hope you buy more than one game a year, and that they can amortize their upfront costs across a large user base.

-Matt N

[Krakin 5,735]

29 minutes ago, b737800 said:

Excuse me? Are you pointing your wrath in the right direction?

My apologies lol that was meant for @Scottoest. Consequences of using the mobile site sometimes. You're one of the people I'd say knows what they're talking about.

[MattNischan 3,778]

50 minutes ago, Krakin said:

It's ongoing development is NOTHING like continuously keeping a game balanced, creating new characters, maps, daily events, expansions, voice acting, writing etc.

I'm not sure where you're divining that from. There will be significant features not available at launch and I don't expect the team size to change at all for a while. Whatever it is costing right now I expect it will continue to cost for at least a good 2-3 more years, easily.

At this point I'd ask how many software development teams or devops/sysadmin teams you've been a part of. Maybe we're just speaking from different levels of experience, which is OK.

-Matt N

[b737800 470]

22 minutes ago, Krakin said:

My apologies lol that was meant for @Scottoest. Consequences of using the mobile site sometimes. You're one of the people I'd say knows what they're talking about.

No worries. "You're one of the people I'd say knows what they're talking about." - can I put that on my Linked-In page please?

[KillerKlient 92]

On 10/30/2019 at 3:24 AM, Scottoest said:

Few things:

1) Traditional multiplayer games don't have servers that operate indefinitely.  In fact, if a game isn't particularly popular, servers can sometimes be shut off within a year.

2) Many games actually deliver multiplayer via some form of largely P2P connection, which costs the publisher nothing.

3) An increasing number of multiplayer games use microtransactions to earn ongoing income, something I assume no one wants to see come to Flight Simulator.

4) It sounds like in the case of MSFS, Azure is doing more than just serving data - it's also doing some heavy computational work on it's end.  In a traditional multiplayer game, the server isn't delivering the actual world map to you either - it's basically just feeding your client a series of updates on the state of all of the players in the game.  That's a major increase in bandwidth.

 

1. What is your point with this though?

2. This is an old model and even when they use P2P, it is a hybrid and requires servers to do stuff like matchmaking, so it doesn't cost "nothing".  Modern games tend to use dedicated servers as the P2P approach is very vulnerable to client side cheating, revealing other players IP addresses (resulting in DOS attacks), generally local firewall issues, etc.

3. Sorry but what do you think a microtransaction is? Have you ever heard of something called an add-on? It's exactly the same thing.  The FS community LOVES add-ons and this would be welcomed.

4. True, it will probably use more data but will also probably have significantly fewer users.