Xbox LIVE Cloud explained by Titanfall studio Respawn Entertainment

Microsoft has not done a very good job highlighting the benefits and features of the Xbox One, so when it comes to defining the mysterious "Cloud" technology that helps power their new system it should come as no surprise that they need a little help. Recognizing the need for a little clarification, Respawn Entertainment's Jon Shiring, an engineer working with the Cloud technology, has attempted to explain this complex idea.

"Cloud doesn't seem to actually mean anything anymore, or it has so many meanings that it's useless as a marketing word," he wrote in a company blog post. "Let me explain this simply: when companies talk about their cloud, all they are saying is that they have a huge amount of servers ready to run whatever you need them to run. That's all."

Okay, so what is with all the hype of the Xbox One and its Cloud technology?

"Microsoft has a cloud service called Azure (it's a real thing – you can go on their website right now and pay for servers and use them to run whatever you want). Microsoft realized that they could use that technology to solve our problem," Shiring explained.

"So they built this powerful system to let us create all sorts of tasks that they will run for us, and it can scale up and down automatically as players come and go. We can upload new programs for them to run and they handle the deployment for us. And they'll host our game servers for other platforms, too! Titanfall uses the Xbox Live Cloud to run dedicated servers for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox 360.

Read more about Xbox LIVE Cloud at GameZone >