CORRECTION: Our original story suggested that players' Xbox One consoles may reboot without warning due to cloud updates. This has been corrected to note that it's the host servers that may reboot during multiplayer games. We regret the error.
has announced the Xbox One will require cloud updates on a regular basis, which could lead to the servers rebooting without warning.
That's according to Xbox Live lead program manager John Bruno, who made the revelation during a presentation at GDC Next yesterday (via IGameReponsibly). Bruno explained that while work has been done to try and prevent the Xbox Live Compute servers rebooting in the middle of a game, Microsoft hasn't managed to eliminate the issue entirely.
"Once in a while, rather frequently actually, the host OS will require an update, meaning the physical machine is going to get rebooted whether your code is running or not," he explained. "That’s a problematic thing for a game, and oftentimes it's in the middle of a multiplayer session. We’ve worked very hard to overcome that, but that’s not to say it’s going to be a reality in every case."
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That’s a problematic thing for a game.
The team behind Titanfall has previously spoken about how dependent the game will be on the Xbox One's cloud capabilities. The implication here, therefore, is that whenever the servers need to be updated or rebooted, the game will be unavailable. When asked by IGameResponsibly about how Titanfall would navigate these issues, Bruno issued the following response:
"I can’t answer that. I don’t know what the guys over at Titanfall have built into their game. It’s up to the game developer. If they want to rely more on our XBLC service, we’re happy to support that. We do provide a platform for them to persist data, but that’s up to the developer to utilize that."
It's possible, then, that the cloud may have a weekly maintenance period to try and avoid issues, scheduled during a convenient time for most gamers, such as in the early hours of Wednesday morning like many MMOs. We've reached out to Microsoft to see if there are any such plans in the pipeline and ask what happens if an emergency maintenance is needed, and will update the story as soon as we hear back
has announced the Xbox One will require cloud updates on a regular basis, which could lead to the servers rebooting without warning.
That's according to Xbox Live lead program manager John Bruno, who made the revelation during a presentation at GDC Next yesterday (via IGameReponsibly). Bruno explained that while work has been done to try and prevent the Xbox Live Compute servers rebooting in the middle of a game, Microsoft hasn't managed to eliminate the issue entirely.
"Once in a while, rather frequently actually, the host OS will require an update, meaning the physical machine is going to get rebooted whether your code is running or not," he explained. "That’s a problematic thing for a game, and oftentimes it's in the middle of a multiplayer session. We’ve worked very hard to overcome that, but that’s not to say it’s going to be a reality in every case."
“
That’s a problematic thing for a game.
The team behind Titanfall has previously spoken about how dependent the game will be on the Xbox One's cloud capabilities. The implication here, therefore, is that whenever the servers need to be updated or rebooted, the game will be unavailable. When asked by IGameResponsibly about how Titanfall would navigate these issues, Bruno issued the following response:
"I can’t answer that. I don’t know what the guys over at Titanfall have built into their game. It’s up to the game developer. If they want to rely more on our XBLC service, we’re happy to support that. We do provide a platform for them to persist data, but that’s up to the developer to utilize that."
It's possible, then, that the cloud may have a weekly maintenance period to try and avoid issues, scheduled during a convenient time for most gamers, such as in the early hours of Wednesday morning like many MMOs. We've reached out to Microsoft to see if there are any such plans in the pipeline and ask what happens if an emergency maintenance is needed, and will update the story as soon as we hear back
