Sony Computer Entertainment Acquires Cloud Gaming Company Gaikai For $380 Million

Very interesting indeed. On the short term, I wonder if they'll use the same technology for hooking up the Vita to the PS3 for remote control. Then I reckon they'll start doing PS2 games as a test-bed, and will be interesting to see where they take it from there.
 
A good move on Sony's part. I can see great use for demos, casual games, remote play, etc.

But BC? I look forward to playing my PS3 games with horrid amounts of input lag, saturating my internet connection and driving ever closer to my ISP's bandwidth cap, all with mediocre IQ. :???: And of course I can look forward to losing my connection to the games when my internet has a hiccup.

Besides, how will this BC be accomplished? If it's hardware, Sony might be maintaining quite a bank of PS3 hardware for the first year or so as the PS4 launch window slowly fills out and the PS3's significant portfolio continues to grow with late-gen titles. If it could be done with software, and yet the PS4 is incapable of the performance necessary, then the hardware costs would likely be even more significant. So Cell will be involved.

Of course the advantage through this all is that there won't be a fixed cost per-console as with hardware BC. Maintaining the full PS3 core hardware for enough users, plus bandwidth costs, versus the cost of Cell in every PS4 (assuming the PS4 GPU and RAM take on the necessary roles in BC). The demand for BC will also drop off over time, as more users transition to PS4 titles.
 
Good move by Sony. They were talking about this prior to this gen. PSN can offer more than just content now, if Sony do something useful with Gaikai! But BC will suck. Ps3 games could be pretty laggy as it is. Add network lag, and they'll be unplayable!
 
Cloud is going to be a big part of the industry down the line. Acquisitions like this are strategically important in terms of building up a patent portfolio, boxing out competitors, etc. It makes a lot of sense to do it while an OnLive or Gaikai are still affordable. 5 years from now this would be a multibillion dollar deal.
 
antwan said:
I want my PS4 to render the game with minimal input lag
Click to expand...
There's no reason to think PS4 will be an online only streaming box. The infrastructure isn't there. This will be a parnet service, allowing some games (think small PSN games) that can be played on all devices, while PS4 will still be playing PS4 native games. It'll be intersting where this places PSMobile.
 
I wonder if they sell PS5 as a marginal purist product for $999. Not confirmed to run new games after a few years when cloud specs are upgraded. You can buy PS5.1 then

But yeah this HUGE. Selling hardware boxes will only make nice profits for company called Apple. Now they can make money on any hardware because they own the platform even if they let 3rd parties like Samsung have their own cloud in the cloud
 
TurnDragoZeroV2G said:
Besides, how will this BC be accomplished? If it's hardware, Sony might be maintaining quite a bank of PS3 hardware for the first year or so as the PS4 launch window slowly fills out and the PS3's significant portfolio continues to grow with late-gen titles. If it could be done with software, and yet the PS4 is incapable of the performance necessary, then the hardware costs would likely be even more significant. So Cell will be involved.
Click to expand...

Dont forget more than likely they'll roll it behind PS Plus anyway, so they'll be earning revenue for it.

Also, I bet the amount of PS3's they'd have to maintain for BC would actually be quite smaller than you think. One of the big advantages of cloud gaming.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Good move by Sony. !
Click to expand...

From the guy steadily downplayed the potential of Onlive in that thread due to not good enough connections :p

Must say I feel a little vindicated as if I spotted the potential of cloud gaming early on, with the legions of Sony fans now it'll suddenly have a whole lot more backers. And now no doubt everybody saw the potential :p
 
Rangers said:
From the guy steadily downplayed the potential of Onlive in that thread due to not good enough connections :p
Click to expand...
:???: Cloud gaming was always on the cards, like streaming movies. The infrastructure just isn't there to have a cloud-only box yet. It will be in future, even if in 5+ years time (and it was 3 years ago we were talking about OnLive), and Sony are securing that now.

A quick search of that thread throws up this post by me:

OnLive is gaming for the SD, YouTube generation. Great for mobile phones, but it's not a replacement for local hardware yet. However, the future of cloud computing, server-side gaming, has been kicked off.
Click to expand...
 
This means that future consoles will be client uniforming input (output) methods, IMO.

ie, it will garante (unlike the PC) that everybody does have a x controler, and a y camera and a z move system,interesting, very IMO.

But I really dislike the idea of a fee and of needing a permanent internet connection..
 
Forget the PS4, does this mean we'll get cloud gaming support on the Vita? That would be quite exciting, and I presume it could be the same deal with movies and music and other such media rich entities.
 
antwan said:
This is not as bad as most 'technical' people predicted. I thought the input lag would suck because of those (as it turns out: uninformed, FUD spreading) people.
Click to expand...
One of those 'uninformed, FUD spreading' people was Richard Leadbetter, grandmaster and head of Eurogamer's Digital Foundry, with many years of video capture and encoding under his belt. That these online services have managed to get as good as they have shows amazing technical achievements by them, and not a lack of understanding or experience or general FUD-spreading by ignorant people. Experts can be wrong too, you know, like all people, and it's not a crime, and a mistake should never be held against someone. If they aren't big enough to admit they were wrong, then they can be the target of criticism, but fallability needs to be accepted with a degree of respect.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
One of those 'uninformed, FUD spreading' people was Richard Leadbetter, grandmaster and head of Eurogamer's Digital Foundry, with many years of video capture and encoding under his belt. That these online services have managed to get as good as they have shows amazing technical achievements by them, and not a lack of understanding or experience or general FUD-spreading by ignorant people. Experts can be wrong too, you know, like all people, and it's not a crime, and a mistake should never be held against someone. If they aren't big enough to admit they were wrong, then they can be the target of criticism, but fallability needs to be accepted with a degree of respect.
Click to expand...

Richard Leadbetter is an expert indeed. Not only video capturing, also videogames: for years I read a magazine which he wrote for: PSW. Never has there been a better magazine (IMO).

But this really shows that he is a true expert: he made a video testing the latency, proving his previous hypothesis wrong. And that is what a real scientist can hope to achieve; prove his own research wrong and building, improving on it.

I was talking about people in my direct environment; who are in game-development. I just mailed one of them the video and he is claiming it's fake :S
So sorry if my post seemed disrespectful towards Richard; I have utmost respect for him.

edit:
this is the full article, for those interested:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-face-off-gaikai-vs-onlive
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Rangers said:
From the guy steadily downplayed the potential of Onlive in that thread due to not good enough connections :p

Must say I feel a little vindicated as if I spotted the potential of cloud gaming early on, with the legions of Sony fans now it'll suddenly have a whole lot more backers. And now no doubt everybody saw the potential :p
Click to expand...

Not really, if its an integral design component of the PS4 then I think Sony is making a huge mistake. If it's however an augementation to PSN/PSSuite then it has the potential to be successful. The real value would lie with the Vita, Experia, a Sony Tablet, Sony TV's, HT receivers, or an STB. But if it provides a BC option for the PS4 then it has some value there too.
 
When I first thought of a deal with Gaikai, all I thought initially was to get the technology so they could use it for remote play algorithms for the Vita, because currently that doesn't hold a candle to what the Wii U does with its tablet controller (which seems to have extremely low latency).
 
Arwin said:
When I first thought of a deal with Gaikai, all I thought initially was to get the technology so they could use it for remote play algorithms for the Vita, because currently that doesn't hold a candle to what the Wii U does with its tablet controller (which seems to have extremely low latency).
Click to expand...

wii U I think is more comparable with wireless HDMI, instead of onlive/gaikai (if I'm not mistaken).

Also I don't think the Vita remote play component would be worth $ 380.000.000, but who am I :)
 
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