'People are moving to the mobile space, and related to that is shifting things to the cloud'
Sony’s recent acquisition of Gaikai will propel the games industry into the cloud space, the console giant’s CEO has said.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Kaz Hirai said that Sony’s $380 million purchase of cloud gaming service Gaikai would encourage the entire industry to take advantage of the cloud.
He also stated that consumers were increasingly moving to the mobile space, and he felt that cloud technology was related to that movement, hinting that the the future of PlayStation could be cross-platform.
“People are moving more and more to the mobile space, so the two keywords, and you’ll probably hear this from everybody: smartphones and tablets,” said Hirai.
“Related to that is moving a lot of things to the cloud. That’s why, for example, we felt that it was very important that we acquire the 50 per cent of our joint venture in Sony Ericsson and make the cell phone business or the smartphone business a 100 per cent-owned subsidiary of Sony.
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“We needed to make decisions a lot faster. In regards to the cloud, one of the things that you probably saw is our acquisition of a company called Gaikai. That is a company that’s going to propel the movement of the video game business into the cloud space very quickly.”
Since it’s $380m acquisition last month, Sony has kept tight lipped on how it will harness the service, although it is believed it could play a central role in the PS4.
I'm so glad some people think Gaikai will propel gaming into cloud gaming as it's the biggest pile of sh1t I've ever had the misfortune to use. I have never EVER got it to work properly, no matter what computer I'm or part of the country I'm in (I've even tried it on a 70 plus MB connection). Where as OnLive has worked 90% of the time for me.
I'm sorry but cloud gaming is a pipe dream until broadband speeds are of an acceptable standard.
As broadband speeds can't continue to increase indefinitely, perhaps streamed cloud gaming will be a key driver towards pushing through that famed (and warned-about) "two tier" internet...
If it does work well on PS3 then I think Sony must be looking towards both extending the life of the (aging) console, avoiding the need for new hardware and moving it's users to a online-only subscription model.
