Microsoft offers free dedicated servers for all Xbox One titles
Call of Duty: Ghosts and Titanfall will both have free dedicated multiplayer servers, and, according to Microsoft's Albert Penello, so will every other game on Xbox One. Penello responded on Twitter to a user inquiring about Microsoft's Xbox Live Compute program.
@PontifusRex yesOctober 15, 2013
That means host migrations, inter-regional issues, and other common problems of player-hosted servers could be a thing of the past for any given Xbox One game. Of course, developers could still elect to use peer-to-peer multiplayer, but why bother if Microsoft's cloud hosting is scalable and free?
Xbox Live lead program manager John Bruno spoke more about Xbox Live Compute in an Xbox Wire post. Beyond dedicated servers, Bruno reiterated Microsoft's plan for a future where developers can offload environmental details, AI, and more to free up console processing power for more player-centric concerns.
With a paid subscription required for most multiplayer on both pending next-gen consoles, it looks like Microsoft may be poised to take the online edge yet again in the next-gen console race.
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I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.