Crackdown 3’s Cloud-Based Multiplayer Requires A Huge Amount Of Bandwidth

Were you impressed by Crackdown 3‘s multiplayer announcement at this year’s Gamescom? If so, you may want to pay attention.

Reagent Games revealed a brand-spanking new trailer for us all to salivate over earlier this week, with its cloud-based multiplayer being a particular highlight. But don’t jump the gun and get over-excited just yet. The game’s producer, David Jones, has told VideoGamer in an interview that the 100% destructible environments of Crackdown 3‘s multiplayer mode will require four times the network bandwidth of an ordinary online game.

We are optimizing for between 2 and 4 megabits…It’s not significantly more [bandwidth than a regular multiplayer game], it’s maybe two to four times as much. A standard is maybe around 1mbit, so it’s a little bit more, yes.

“A little bit more” is certainly an overstatement – Jones may be underestimating the limitation on bandwidth that some internet service providers place on their customers, and that’s not even taking into consideration varied performances depending on where you live.

However, Jones continued on to say that it’s strictly only the multiplayer side of the game that’ll require the increased bandwidth.

We wanted to create a very different experience for the multiplayer game. But at the same time we wanted players to have the kind of campaign game they always loved, and if they want to play that offline absolutely they should be able to. Obviously they have to go online for co-op but that’s still the same campaign game.

Reagent Games still have plenty of time to get the requirement down to a more acceptable level, but if they can’t, chances are there are going to be some irritated consumers who can’t handle the inflated bandwidth barrier when Crackdown 3 releases next year.