John_Dong

Ok fine Battlefield 3 uses dedicated servers and it requires no subscription and they hold the entire BF3 net on almost 250 servers.

I am pretty sure GOW3 uses DemonWare servers so it is probably in the USA. Do you understand how much money these companies get per release and the fact that they are published by Microsoft?

Do you understand how much money these companies get per release and the fact that they are published by Microsoft? Also, Gears of War 3 doesn't have a subscription for dedicated servers. BTW if the admins would turn email verification on in the VBulletin CP or add a captcha the below comments wouldn't happen XD

Mostly everything is done in C++ because the xex (360 Executable) file structure is based completely on C++ and Assembly but you can load libraries that allow for other languages like C# and Lua but usually they need to be translated to native (C and C++) for it to function properly. My point is that they have the full power of the Xenon linux kernel and they have access to everything inside of it. The Xbox 360 is a very powerful platform for how old it is and I would love to personally be a part of software development on it but sadly all I can do is pretend on the crappy XNA Game Studio and read articles on how it functions on unmanaged code. I have seen a small company develop an entire network infrastructure (from scratch) in less than a month even counting the compensation for drawbacks. The biggest time hog is probably getting Microsoft to sign the LIVE/PIRS packages and the files inslde like the default.xexp for the Xbox Live updates and not the companies development period. NOTE: In my honest opinion I believe that sticking to C++ is the best bet because otherwise they would have to develop the C# framework around everything they convert from native to C#. C++ is waaaay better for games anyway because you can allocate your data differently and get waaay more speed out of something then running it managed (unless they have a custom garbage collector?). SIDE NOTE: C# is easily possible on the Xbox 360 with indie games so I am sure that it isn't hard for them to implement it but I am sure their C# libraries are a lot stronger than the XNA Game Studio ones like they probably have more access to otherwise restricted areas of the console unless they are just using them for game scripts.

As far as my opinion goes it should be done. It shouldn't be too hard to hand a few TCP connections over to a dedicated server to be honest and with them using C++ for the programming language that makes it even easier because of how much you can do with packet building. The netcode is currently setup to put as little as possible load on the server (aka host) and if it was on a dedicated server and used a bit more resources (buffers, upload speed, etc) then you could have a way faster game overall. As far as the code goes I am sure they could write it in less time than that. The game already has functions to pull data from the global servers and push it to a profile why not expand on that?