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

Of course not. I didn't initially think they'd buy the whole company either, though I'm definitely not saying it wouldn't be a great idea. If that lag video is real, then it's a good investment. I personally don't think (and/or hope) streaming takes over for core gaming, but there are no doubt a lot of uses for it, no question about that. Not just games: think of video streaming services, where the whole user interface is streamed as well as the videos themselves. Would be a lot easier to maintain than having various clients. Integrating that into TVs, definitely also a good thing - they won't work anyway if they don't have a TV cable plugged in, so additional features that require a connection work easily enough. No upgrade worries for the service, as the whole menu is server-side.

 

I told you cloud was the future..whether we like it or not :/

 

And this is ups the stakes quite a bit to.

http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/6/30/3127602/gaikai-google-nacl-native-client

In regards to the latency/lag, there was some discussion on the x264 list some time back about this. And they said they did some modification to x264 for a client that was not OnLive, but did the same thing.
They also claimed that what they did for this client, was a much better solution than OnLive was doing.

Could be this client was Gaikai, just pure speculation on my part.

 

I just tried The Witcher 2 on GaiKai (fresh try, only tested OnLive so far) and it does indeed feel great. Of course it doubt this looks better than the 360, but it may well have better framerates (don't have 360 version) and there is no real noticeable lag. So this is definitely getting somewhere.

 

If they use this for backward compatibility on ps4 I wonder if you'll be able to play the ps3 games you already own at no extra cost? Put the disc in to verify you have it and then stream the game?

 

I presume they'll start with games that you have digital rights for anyway, and take it from there. Perhaps they'll add Gaikai features to Playstation Plus first, who knows. We'll have to wait and see, but it does give Sony quite a lot of new options they didn't have before.

 

Currently, the only Sony product that has cloud gaming support is Xperia Play with android OnLive app.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lfk1NUq91Mc#t=159s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iRvb7Jvabqg#t=72s

Acquisition of Gaikai is an excellent futureproof move that can really offer a lot for gamers who have good internet connection in their gaming area and are willing to suffer trough a little lag [7 million Diablo 3 players are playing like mad trough singleplayer campaign with 100ms lag].

Not only this provides backwards compatibility for devices that cant emulate old exotic architectures, but also brings future compatibility for every gaming product Sony has made from PSP and beyond. PSP/Vita streaming PS3 games, or PS3 streaming PS4 games.

PSP and Vita users will have a blast with this, expecially if sony enables sharing of games between devices [You bought Killzone 5 for PS4 and you have PS+ ? Then stream that game to Vita for free].

 

Dont know why people talk about BC. I dont see why they would waste their times on that....

The best way to use this service is for demo and ps+ one hour previews. The demos for consoles game are now 7GB-15GB and will keep getting bigger next gen. This is the reason i dont play many demos. Now you just click a button and you are playing with this service. Buying a downloaded games would be great with advance internet speeds you could download the game in the background while you start playing. Your save games already sync with cloud on ps3.
Now your games will...

I tried crysis 2 out and it play perfectly. I played for 20 min and I didnt notice any input lag and looks better than my ps3 version. I did have 1-2 seconds of video miss up while i was playing but that was it. Very shock to be honest....

I like this idea:

http://kotaku.com/5922812/you-may-a...i-reality-of-last-nights-big-sony+gaikai-news

 

After actually playing and paying on onlive for 2 months as well as experiencing the brand new "single player lag" in Diablo 3 I'm less than turned on by the news.

Definitely should work in labs and some area blessed by awesome infrastructures other than that it's going to be a while before it is a workable solution for the masses.
And there is something worse than lag, inconsistency in the input lag.

 

You are not taking away people ps3 when they buy a ps4. If you want to play those games turn on your ps3.

I just dont see the point because I had a launch p3 with ps2 and I never used it. I sure dont want to go back and play old ps2 games. Most people dont, its not worth the investment.

 

With regard to BC Sony would need to produce a new ps3, a faster one.
If any one read the articles about that kind of tech to reduce lag game are rendered at 60fps.
PS3 runs barely at 30fps, add in the network lag, etc.

 

This is great news. I was hoping something like this would happen. It's good to see them investing in the future of their platform.

 

To have such a big huge megastore you need an OS.
Thanks to competition MS can now come with its market place which I'm confident a few year ago would have felt under the regulators attacks.

Istore is tight to iOS, Google play to Android, windows 8 market place... obviously to windows.

We see how things are going for the editors that try to by pass those market place and come with their own. We are going to see how Valve manages to survive it (they can it's just going to be tough, really tough).

It's the same imo with game streaming. Apple, Google, MS may launch such a service tied to their OS. I don't think that they are in a hurry to do so thought as infrastructure is OK in only a hand few of countries, and I would be willing to know how much it would cost to maintain and run gaming farms.

 

I'm not, they can't compete.
Actually editing power aside Sony is imo a less potent company than Samsung.
There is no way while cutting more and more expanses, services, etc. they can compete with Google, Apple and MS which make money.

I'm not sure about how this buy out fares in the gran scheme of things.
I feel like SOny is trying to be big while avoiding the competition (smart TV and prime android actor in the smart TV realm).
One could tell that they are trying to be a big fish in a small pond, but the real question is "is there a small pond in the market Sony is engaged in?"

 

Honestly if you think that there is room for another actor in the OS field with Apple, MS and Google engaged in a death fight we're never going to agree.

I'm not sure we gonna have a balanced market with close to evenly shares across the actors.
Actually my bet would be more like one has to die, one has to win, the other one may be left with a more or less significant niche.