What Happens If the Cloud Goes Down?
This may seem like a bit of a dumb question, and that’s because it largely is, but it’s still something to consider if the idea of Scarlett Cloud is appealing to you. Say, one day, you’re happily playing the latest Fallout or Final Fantasy title to release on the new hardware, only for the cloud servers to come under such immense strain from a surge of players wanting to jump into the hot new title, that your experience is hindered. Be it through sluggish performance, lag, input lag (though according to the report, Microsoft feels confident it has resolved), or just the service going down altogether.
Microsoft’s server security is no doubt airtight, but never say never. I mean, we all saw what happened to new PS4 and Xbox One owners at Christmas a couple years ago. There’s nothing to say it couldn’t happen again.
And while we’re on the topic of the performance of the streaming box, it’s also worth considering exactly how fast your internet connection will need to be in order to seamlessly transmit data to and from the cloud, all in what we’d expect to be a full HD resolution and a fairly consistent framerate over 30fps. Indeed, we’ve written in detail about the issue of global infrastructure hindering a potential Xbox cloud device.
With the report suggesting that games on Scarlett Cloud will essentially “running in two locations at the same time and utilizes Microsoft’s cloud to stitch it all together,” it’s possible you may be able to play some downscaled version of the game, or even just a demo-esque chunk of it if your connection was interrupted. Though, don’t expect it to look all that great, as the report once again suggests that the streaming box “will still cost significantly less” despite having some onboard processing power to deal with controller input, image processing, and collision detection.
Do we think Microsoft has thought of this? Absolutely. We’re just not entirely sure whether there will be a failsafe for Scarlett Cloud if the cloud goes down, or whether you’ll just be left with a nice, sleek-looking paperweight temporarily.
