One of Microsoft’s main selling points with the Xbox One was its integration with Azure Servers dotted around the globe, the idea being that the console would be able to use the computational power of the cloud to increase the performance of certain games. Microsoft also plans to use those servers to host online games. This week Microsoft Australia’s Pip Marlow announced that the long promised servers in Australia (for Melbourne and Sydney) were mere months away from launch.
These Azure centres were announced last year and the long term promise was a 2014 launch date. In a blog post Marlow stated the following:
I still can’t give you the final date for general availability but I can share that it is just around the corner, a matter of months away.
She also mentioned that the Azure centres were currently in preview with some private partners. We can only assume those private partners would be businesses, as this is the primary function of the centres.
But their launch in Australia will have a beneficial impact in Australia, particularly when it comes to online games. You may recall that Titanfall’s launch in Australia was plagued with difficulties — high pings, difficulties finding games — and this was a direct impact of Australia having no local servers. EA and Respawn themselves fixed that problem by launching their own servers locally, but having Azure centres in Melbourne and Sydney would negate that need.
Hopefully we’ll get them in time for the Halo Master Chief Collection.
Via Lifehacker
Comments
5 responses to “Microsoft’s Local Servers In ‘Private Preview’, Coming In A Few Months”
I was actually thinking they where putting a server in North Queensland going by their map, Either that or there is a tiny town named Melbourne or Sydney in North Queensland that we’ve never heard of until now.
The map may have been made by an American, its probably lucky they got 2 dots on the right continent…
WIlll be great when it finally lands here, then they just need to bring O365 in the country and call it a day 🙂
Wasn’t Titanfall AU servers Azure servers? I remember reading article back then saying Microsoft pushed some server out for us to play on.
Yeah I’m with you mate they just released some servers from the Sydney datacentre IMO. It was the first one being built I believe. At any rate I’m expecting these to be open to the public before Halo MCC drops on Nov 11th.