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Warhawk PS3 Server Clusters
News for nerds writes "The official Sony Playstation blog posted the game server details of the upcoming online shooter game Warhawk. Interestingly the game's Ranked Dedicated servers, available in addition to user-hosted PS3 servers, are hosted in rack-mounted PS3 clusters."
Rack mounted clusters of thrown away money!
The only question is will Microsoft listen and learn how to do online right from Sony?
Sony is the gold standard in console online play:
# Free online play for everyone who owns a console for the life of the system - some 7 to 10 years
# Dedicated servers for lagfree gaming
# High player counts for games, 32 to 40 player games with zero lag thanks to the dedicated servers
# And of course Home, the virtual online world created by Sony for developers to create custom spaces for their games
# Home will have custom spaces for clans that can be used as a meeting place for before and after matches, the spaces will of course be able to be decked out in the clans theme and various screenshots from previous games and streaming movies up on the walls
# Home will have matchmaking for players who meet while in home and have the ability to launch right into games together as a group right from Home
Absolutely amazing.
Microsoft is lucky Nintendo is around because otherwise they would be the worst online service
# Forces players to pay 50 dollars every year - don't pay, your console is gimped to sit there and play nothing but single player games
# Ends up tacking on hundreds of dollars to the price of the console over the life of the system
# No dedicated servers, even though you are forced by Microsoft to pay money every year they don't give you dedicated servers for games like Gears of War and Halo 3
# Low player counts, Gears of War can only handle 8 players at a time, and Halo 3 can only handle 16 players per game due to the outdated P2P networking setups in those games
# No answer to Home, just plain old menus
It's like Microsoft isn't even trying to make a competitive online service to Sony's. They appear to only care about bilking players out of 50 bucks a year.
Warhawk is easily the best console online game this year from everyone who played the beta. Dedicated servers, 32 players per game, one disc is all that is needed for LAN parties(everyone can install from the just one disc), player's can setup their own dedicated server at home on their PS3. Awesome, just fucking awesome. And the game only costs 40 buck or 60 bucks for the BluRay version with a really good headset.
The Cell is an amazing piece of technology... this is a great PR move by Sony hosting servers off PS3s. Warhawk is going to be an amazing game.