Sony Buys Gaikai

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[H]ard|Gawd
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I'm not overly familiar with the company Gaikai, but Sony must have wanted to get to know them a little better. The cash strapped company bought Gaikai for $380 million this past weekend. That is interesting being they had such a bad year last year cash wise.

What does anyone else think they are wanting to do with this? I think they might have acquired them for some server technology to make the PSN work better, and possibly as a way to get backwards compatibility into the PS4 without putting tons of hardware in there. I certainly hope it doesn't mean they are going to try to go streaming only on their next console, but I think I would be ok with them doing the BC thing.
 
like i said, ps4 is going to steam older games instead of emulating it. check my older topic which ppl wouldnt believe.
 
TheBuzzer said:
like i said, ps4 is going to steam older games instead of emulating it. check my older topic which ppl wouldnt believe.
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I doubt people "wouldn't believe" you. I don't think there is any doubt that gaming is moving digitally and/or to the cloud. Disk based games are going to die off and with the ever increasing bandwidth caps on downloads (especially in non-US countries) I see streaming content/games as an alternative (though I have no data to compare total data streamed to download size of 1 game).
 
Great news for the playstation brand me thinks. I mean with this they could stream ps2/ps3 content to ps vita without worrying about emulation on the actual device. As for ps3, they could stream ps2 games that normally would be hard to emulate on the ps3 hw.

As for ps4, this could solve the "BC" issue by streaming the games all the way back to ps1. Cool news.
 
Some places have been speculating that this means the PS4 will be strictly a streaming console which I don't see as any bit of true. There's no way this late in the development (which started in 2010) that they add something like this. I absolutely agree the streaming service is for PS1/2/3 classics.
 
Why would they stream PS1 games when the emulation is well understood and the file size is so low compared to video bandwidth requirements?

A streaming sevice would be great for new game demos and systems like the PS3 which are difficult to emulate and have very large files to work with.
 
It's too bad they didn't go with the rumored partnership with OnLive instead IMO if they wanted to go this way and frankly upgrade and buff their own PSN network up. Their servers still leave a LOT to be desired.
 
Sony buying Gaikai is proof enough to me that they don't know how to enter this space on their own. They basically bought someone who publishes PC games only to the cloud and now have to shoehorn the service into PSN somehow. Not only that but you simply cannot make easy changes to your infrastructure to now just publish out "console" games. There is a reason both OnLive and Gaikai only publish PC games.. and now Sony is going to have to figure out how to change that, and quick. I"m sure it will be neat, but much like PSN in general it will feel disconnected and not well put together as a product.

MS has Azure and has been in the cloud space since the 90s. They are a software giant who will most definitely develop Azure into Live from the ground up and their cloud offering will be designed with the platform in mind. This is what Sony should have done, instead of investing $330 million into Gaikai they should have hired some real engineers to build it right and for PSN. In the end, they probably ran out of time and needed something and quick.

It will be interesting to see these services with the rollout of next gen. But in the end, as soon as I read Sony bought Gaikai I didn't even think it was awesome...

I thought it was a desperate move to stay alive.
 
btw i bet sony is going to make streaming older games a ps plus feature
 
This is a smart move, because the top of the line Samsung LED SMART TV's this year were supposed to be powered by Gaikai for cloud gaming. Now, maybe not, or royalties time.
 
Mozex said:
Why would they stream PS1 games when the emulation is well understood and the file size is so low compared to video bandwidth requirements?

A streaming sevice would be great for new game Livedemos and systems like the PS3 which are difficult to emulate and have very large files to work with.
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See PS Vita and ps1 emulation.....its not here yet, guess why?

With a cloud service, they wouldn't have to delay BC like PS Vita. And I think this is a great move for Sony to prepare for the future. I think PSN would be better but the hw(PS3) is holding it back. Vita takes PSN to a better level but since its a portable, its integration is not like the 360(live).

But PSN at its space is doing great. Remember this is Live's 2nd Gen showing while psn's first outing. PSN on ps4 will really be up to 'standards' and possibly question users why they pay for multi player on 720/infinity/8.
 
ValeX said:
I honestly really hope Sony ditches the PS4 console altogether, I certainly don't want to buy yet another box with a separate set of games. I don't think most people want to to. Plus launching a console usually loses them boatloads of money up front and they only make it back by selling games. Why not just skip the nasty part and stream all PS4 games to the PS3 console's we all already have? I would die instantly of joy. Whatever happens, as long as I get PS2 streaming on my PS3 i'll be happy.
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Um thats how consoles have been like for 20 years. Plus streaming wont be the #1 feature for consoles any time soon. (Digital only age is still far away, market not ready) This is just to get "ready" for the future. PS4 will still be released and Sony will still make exclusives for it just like MS/Nintendo.
 
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