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Xbox 720 – Azure How Windows 8, Apps and Online Gaming Could Transform the Xbox
Continuing with the analysis of a possible cloud-based Xbox platform, we turn the spotlight on Windows Azure. As we last mentioned, we must consider the role of Dave Cutler, lead developer for so many significant products such as VMS, Windows NT, and Windows Azure and how his presence on the Microsoft Xbox team could reveal the coming plans for the platform. Little is publicly known about his role on the Xbox team, but he’s certainly not out to pasture. No, the move gives us a very clear indication of the direction the Xbox in particular is moving towards, especially when you look at Cutler’s last project – Windows Azure.
Windows Azure was released in early 2010 and is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, competing with the likes of Amazon, Rackspace Cloud, IBM SmartCloud, and the lot of cloud services. The platform features numerous services such as PaaS, IaaS, Business Analytics, and more and even offers an Apache Hadoop distribution (in Technical Preview). The takeaway is that the Azure platform is a performance environment that could easily deliver most any service built on it. Massive distributed datacenters host the service and are based in the most major network-connected locations. The infrastructure could easily be tuned for desktop delivery, application delivery, and gameplay.
Dave Cutler enters the picture as that connection between Azure and the massively popular gaming system. The only reasonable thing to infer is that the Xbox will be geared to utilize Azure in some MAJOR way. It could be in the form of streaming app delivery to your Xbox, games on demand, or as we have been suggesting, a completely cloud-based Xbox gaming platform. There may be those that don’t consider an online gaming system as viable and robust enough, however an observation to consider is that a significant percentage of games are relatively not all that graphics or resource intensive. This base makes sense for a cloud-based gaming system. For those games that are resource intensive, the possibility of some sort of hybrid Xbox system is in order, retaining high-end gaming design, local resources, etc.
Remote Technology and VDI-type implications
The design and development of Remote FX in Windows 8 also points to some other possibilities outside beyond the Xbox. The infrastructure that makes up a Remote FX environment, including the resource-intensive sever requirements, and simplified decode elements that make up the client environment form the component profile for a robust LAN-based VDI solution. When you add Azure to that formula, the possibility of a web-based VDI infrastructure becomes very compelling.
Streaming Apps
Now some are probably wondering why would you want to access a Windows 8 desktop on your Xbox? Well most wouldn’t want to. Consider however, Windows Server also has a technology called RemoteApp – basically app streaming technology. Through this technology, apps could run on an Azure-based service, and be accessible to clients as a streamed app. Now you have an infrastructure that can deliver full desktop to very thin clients over a WAN. You also have an infrastructure that can thin-stream apps over the WAN to clients on their desktop or potentially on their Xbox consoles. Just think about what that might look like –something like doing your taxes on your Xbox or your tablet, with the same environment as exists on your desktop. Or how about composing a document and having the same session available within the streaming app from any of the devices, the possibilities are vast and would potentially all run on one infrastructure.
To summarize, the components of a robust architecture that can support WAN-based VDI, an online gaming platform, a streaming application platform, and the portability to a portfolio of client devices that share the Windows 8 base are all pieces that are in place or coming up soon. You also have a principal architect of the cloud-based environment working on the premier gaming platform. My money is on an initial wave of streaming apps available and consistent on Xbox 720 and Windows 8 devices. This would be followed by a full online gaming service featuring the Xbox brand, but no longer necessarily bound to a physical top-of-the-line Xbox. My next article will explain that a little more and explain why this may open the door to Microsoft unleashing the Xbox in entirely new ways that may include Xbox production NOT from Microsoft.
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