Crackdown 3 separates the main game campaign and its full destruction multiplayer mode called Wrecking Zone. This mode runs on Azure Cloud to offer full destruction for the city leading to some impressive multiplayer matches.
Crackdown 3 creative director, Joe Staten, in an interview with GamesBeat talked about how they are using the Azure Cloud servers to power up the destruction offered in the Wrecking Zone multiplayer mode.
What we’re doing in Wrecking Zone is we’re running Havok in Azure. We’re spinning up the equivalent of 12 Xbox Ones, that level of cloud compute, to do this lockstep full destruction, ” said Staten when explaining the use of Cloud.
“What this means is that if you’re on a day one Xbox One from four years ago, or a brand new Xbox One X, that experience of destruction will be the same on all platforms. An Xbox One X will be rendering it in 4K and an Xbox One will be in 1080p or what have you, but a destructive chunk is a destructive chunk regardless of the platform. It’s really nice. It means that even if I have an older piece of hardware, I’m not getting a downgraded Wrecking Zone experience.”
“There are no technical limits to how big we could make this map or the number of players we could put into it. I mean, I’m sure there are eventually some limits, but there are no hard, immediate technical limits. The reason why the map is the size it is, the player count we have, those are all design choices. We could have chosen to spin up more Azure servers. There are, of course, costs associated with that, so we had to find some balance between the experience and the cost. But that’s how we’re using cloud compute, to create this consistently fun, fully destructible experience for everyone on all platforms.”
Regarding the risk of latency due to Cloud servers, Staten acknowledged it but said that they have a good solution for it.
“Also, we have distributed data centers around the world, so we’re making sure people aren’t adversely affected by bad ping times. Whatever platform you’re on, wherever you are in the world, it should be an equally enjoyable experience, ” assured Staten.
Crackdown 3 has received its ESRB rating and it will also get reviews on February 11th or full four days before the official release date. The game is set to launch on February 15th for the Xbox One and Windows 10. It will arrive on the Xbox Game Pass on the same day.
Source (GamesBeat)
