Server costs can be expensive, and when you’re a smaller studio whose most recent game didn’t exactly light the world on fire, it might not always make sense to keep the multiplayer lights on. Fortunately, developing games on the Xbox One gives creators free access to the all-powerful Cloud – even if this technology is pretty pricy on Microsoft’s end. It’s a resource that plenty of companies should enjoy, and one that Microsoft's John Bruno feel will keep many smaller games alive.
“I do think that will be advantages to the smaller game shops that had previously been spooked about getting into the server development because of the financial obstacle or the development obstacle there,” he told GameIndustry International. “That was one of the big intents, to take this barrier to entry of server development away and let these developers really explore what they could do with the cloud without having to worry about allocating financial resources or server developers to the problem.
"We've even heard stories where the developers have had that and wanted to shut down games and servers over time and that really does disrupt their communities. One of the big advantages of our service is that it's completely on demand, so that as games wax and wane in popularity so do the resources that get applied to it from Compute. Providing that elastic scale at a really beneficial cost price point is a big benefit to developers."
Microsoft has made plenty of interesting claims when it comes to the Xbox One’s Cloud, but this one doesn’t seem like smoke and mirrors. Free service will help those who need a hand, so expect plenty of people to enjoy the benefits.
