Well, Titanfall has finally launched and largely without any problems. Some may wonder why it’s a big deal or worth writing about. They are partly right, but let me explain why I think it is a big deal. Also, to my surprise of it being pulled off.
Titanfall was a huge deal for Microsoft’s Xbox One and yes, I know it’s available on other platforms. Those platforms though, weren’t counting on Titanfall for that extra push. Titanfall was Microsoft’s ‘thing’ for the Xbox One. It was largely the reason I chose an Xbox One over the PS4. Titanfall had to have a successful launch on the Xbox One and for a couple of weeks leading up to it, I was unsure if it would happen.
I don’t think a successful Titanfall launch would have been limited to the game being stable as the servers were slammed. This was a huge part of it for sure, but I think player experience as a whole, was paramount. This included Titanfall remaining stable, the party experience being vastly improved and the ability for players to stream their Titanfall matches.
Many of these questions were being addressed leading up to the launch of Titanfall, which seemed to me, a perfect storm. EA’s history of successful launches is almost non-existent. They had a spectacular launch of Sim City, spectacular only in its failure. Sim City was an online only game, much like Titanfall. The game was only playable if the servers could withstand the demand and they couldn’t. The servers crashed, crashed hard. Leaving many without the ability to play the game they gave EA $60 dollars for. After Sim City came the Battlefield 4 launch. Players on the PS4 were reporting corrupted save files and Xbox One had the great one-hit kill bug. Not to mention that many users are still having a problem with server stability.
Next, was the update that Microsoft was bringing to the Xbox One. An update that would hopefully give players as great, if not, a greater online experience with the Xbox One. Microsoft tends to roll out updates with no problems. But the most recent update had a bug in which players would get a black screen during gameplay. It wasn’t widespread and would mostly happen during the transfer to the home screen from a game. This bug, in an update before the party system update, left me a little curious as to how well the next and arguably most important update before Titanfall launched would roll out.
Not only was an update coming for Xbox One, but Twitch.tv was finally coming to the Xbox One and of course, the same day as Titanfall. Broadcasting was going to become a big part of the Titanfall experience for many players. Simply saying ‘Xbox, Broadcast’ would allow players to stream their experience with the greater gaming community and to showcase their skill or lack thereof.
What was needed now to keep Titanfall alive and running under the intense pressure it would receive from possibly millions of players jumping in at the same time, was dedicated servers. Buying thousands of servers, expensive. Hiring people to manage those servers, expensive. So Repawn turned to Microsoft to help with this problem and Micrsoft answered with Azure. Azure is essentially a cloud program that runs, maintains and allocates servers as needed. As Respawn stated on their blog when discussing Azure:
With the Xbox Live Cloud, we don’t have to worry about estimating how many servers we’ll need on launch day. We don’t have to find ISPs all over the globe and rent servers from each one. We don’t have to maintain the servers or copy new builds to every server. That lets us focus on things that make our game more fun. And best yet, Microsoft has datacenters all over the world, so everyone playing our game should have a consistent, low latency connection to their local datacenter.
One by one as these problems were addressed and came to pass it seemed as if Titanfall would have a successful launch. It pretty much did. I picked up my copy on launch night and haven’t had a problem since, playing Titanfall to my heart’s content. Some players on PC though, weren’t so lucky. Many reported a 503 error which was keeping them from connecting to the Origin servers. EA’s Origin servers.
If that was the only problem, then I would have to say that it went well. A successful Titanfall launch is what Microsoft needed. Had it crashed and burned, it could’ve been the death knell of the Xbox One. Maybe it’s a turned corner instead, only time will tell.
