They aren't the first or the only one doing this. Crackdown 3 already semi-famously uses Microsoft's cloud systems to do some physics processing in the cloud and not on the client.

Stadia might be a lot easier for devs to code against since everything is in the "cloud", rather than having to split where the processing happens specifically, and so we might see more exclusives there because of that, but MS and friends aren't going to just fall over and give up if this ends up working.

> Crackdown 3 already semi-famously uses Microsoft's cloud systems to do some physics processing in the cloud and not on the client.

Is that true though? I remember in the early Don Mattrick days of Microsoft they were heavily pushing the whole cloud physics thing but ever since then that has been swept under the carpet or heavily downplayed.

I haven't played it myself nor have I done a ton of research, but Crackdown 3 just came out recently, and I heard them talking about how important the cloud aspect of it is to enable the dynamic destruction they have in their multiplayer stuff.

The link below from late 2018 talks about it a bit

https://www.windowscentral.com/inside-crackdown-3s-azure-clo...

From people who've actually played it, it's nothing like what they hyped up or demoed way back when.

It's used in the multiplayer, but whether it actually makes a difference or not is debatable.

Digital Foundry's opinion:

> Crackdown 3 doesn't deliver much of the promise previously showcased from the power of the cloud.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-crack...