Hosting Unreal games... (1 Viewer)

[WillY]

My understanding is that whoever hosts the game is the server, correct? Does anyone know what kind of upload bandwidth is going to be needed to host decent games? If it's anything like xbconnect, a standard DSL connection wouldn't really cut it for hosting 16 player games. I know live code is optimized, so hopefully it won't be an issue...

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Many indications at this point is that each game is played on an all-peer network with no true server. The host controls various aspects of the game without actually acting as the game server.

It is possible that for certain titles, Microsoft might host a certain number of games for many (16? 32?) players (at least one Unreal Championship developer has stated that this may happen). Personally I doubt the XBox client will handle a 32-player action game effectively but we'll see.

Due to NDA and Microsoft not wanting to reveal much about their network to the competition, don't look for a straightforward answer to how this all works any time soon. There's really nothing to do but wait for the software and try it out and see how much you can get away with.

Personally, I'm not counting on being able to play typical 'free' games with more than 6 or 8 players.