Sony buys Gaikai for $380m

[Neon Ignition]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-06-a-deal-between-sony-and-gaikai-doesnt-exist-says-david-perry

Dave Perry says that no deal with Sony exists... having conveniently waited till after E3 to say so.

[charlesr]

Sony buys Gaikai for $380m

[Neon Ignition]

Next up, MS buys OnLive

Very savvy of Sony despite their financial woes. Gives them a real in road into cloud gaming whilst protecting themselves from any more companies sneaking up and getting the edge on them. They can also have greater control in how cloud gaming comes into effect, especially if OnLive continues to disappear from public consciousness like it feels it's doing. They can use it in the short term for emulation as rumoured above and be ahead of the curve when it comes into more current gen areas. There'll no doubt be tons of rumours the PS4 will be a cloud system now which is never going to happen but interesting to see Sony go for it.

[hudson]

I haven't tried much Cloud gaming before, but I just tried Alan Wake for free on Gaikai. I'm not sure if it's because it's a demo or my connection, but it's not looking great in terms of resolution. I don't want this to be the future if it looks like I'm playing a game that has the quality of looking like it is being streamed via someone's web cam.

How good can game streaming look?

[Family Fry]

Digital Foundry vs article comparing on live and gaikai.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-face-off-gaikai-vs-onlive

['Press Start']

Interesting to see if this cloud gaming service will be delivered through other Manufacturers TV sets or if Sony will keep it exclusively for their sets now.

*edit* Oh they will still supply Geikai to Samsung/LG TVs.

Wonder what Apple are doing in the background....

[J0e Musashi]

Hopefully they bring out an OnLive-style console. They could force PSN+ on users that way. If it was around the ?70 mark, and you got all the current features of PSN+ I'd buy it in an instant.

[capcom_suicide]

I was sure that MS would buy Onlive, but it seems Sony is first to consolidate.

I would expect that games consoles built into TV's would be the best model for Sony, drop the R&D on all these silly GPU/CPU's and just stream the games over the internet at 30fps and 150ms latency.

After all, an increasing number of casual gamers these days don't care about muddy visuals, input lag or owning physical content. Cloud is for sure a huge player in the future.

Once the consoles are finally dropped (I would guess this is the final generation, and PSVita is without doubt the final sony handheld, the next being a controller for Tablet devices and cloud based gaming) this may also be a reason that PC games have a small boom, as the 0,5% that do care about visuals and input lag will be forced to buy PC.

[Neon Ignition]

It depends on how far they go licensing it out to other TV manufacturers. Sony aren't going to ditch optical drive consoles yet as they still want to push Blu-Ray plus the consumer demand for digital software isn't high enough yet. They also have to be mindful of what other companies do and there isn't that big a drive to move to the Cloud set up yet really, they'd end up giving up a large proportion of their userbase and nearly all their marketing presence at a street level which would kill the Vita overnight. We're not going to get Cloud only for a long time yet, however this will be part of Sony covering its back.

[J0e Musashi]

So you'd be forced to buy a new TV just to play games?

That's not good business at all. I'm still going with a STB.

[Brad]

Unlimited fast Internet is still something most people can't get and or won't pay for in this country. Until that changes there'll be little demand for on live or gakai.

[capcom_suicide]

So you'd be forced to buy a new TV just to play games?

That's not good business at all. I'm still going with a STB.

Not at all, I would guess the option would be either:

1.) Buy Sony TV with "Cloud PSN" builtin and BT Controller

or

2.) Buy "Cloud PSN" on a USB Stick with HDMI output and BT controller.

Like cotton candy:

[capcom_suicide]

Unlimited fast Internet is still something most people can't get and or won't pay for in this country. Until that changes there'll be little demand for on live or gakai.

Indeed, but I would expect that a large number of "Casual" games, a local 8GB SSD would be enough for "cached mode" where you download a copy and play locally. Only the top tier "Resitance 5" type games will require a persistant connection, and these will represent the lower end of ROI for Sony.

Take for example GOW devs "Epic." Their best ROI of any product ever was a game from the apple APP store.

Giants like Sony are leaking $$$$, and I am quite sure the console market will have its final generation with the PS4.

[capcom_suicide]

PS. Cloud is already at "Console" levels of latency, and even if the internet of the UK lages behind, the USA, Japan and the rest of europe will have enough customers to make this a potential revenue generator.

[Brad]

That chart doesn't tell the whole story though. Look at this:



Obviously the Higgs Boson and Ganglian filtration are set but there's still plenty of room for improvement in other areas.