Destruction in the Cloud: Crackdown 3’s Blessing or Blemish

Ever since the first tech demos of the newest Crackdown game, loads of people in the gaming community have been left in awe of the exceptional destruction mechanics. As impressive as it has been, it has also caused a little bit of concern among gamers. If this game is truly going to be the swan song of Microsoft’s big push for cloud computing, how well is the cloud going to handle being pushed? The spectrum of reactions ranges from the servers holding steady to the servers melting in their mounts, and each of these sides have their own equally valid merits.

The decision to make the cloud-based, 100% destruction only available in the multiplayer mode is likely a move to help reduce the overall impact of server usage. Across multiple tech demos we have seen the destruction reach up to and over 10 “servers” worth of usage, with the developers stating their current record being 14. Having that amount used by hundreds of players locally for their own separate single-player instances would be a nightmare. Forcing it in to multiplayer helps reduce that nightmare scenario down by a factor of the multiplayer player count (e.g. 10 players using 10 servers each vs. 10 players using 10 servers for a single multiplayer session).

As with many games these days, Crackdown 3 is going to have its own beta launching this summer. This will be the first real indicator of whether or not the servers will be able to handle the heavy load of gamers around the world proceeding to blow up every single building they can find. When (not if) the servers start to crack under the pressure, it will be easy to blow off as “it’s just a beta” with little to no recourse. However, even with it being a beta the overall stability will help shine a bit of light on what to expect when the game eventually does launch later in 2016.