Sony Getting Into Cloud Gaming With Gaikai Purchase

I think that OnLive is a great value.

Why didn't Sony and Valve ever get together? I Portal 2 came out with SteamPlay and I always hoped that they would jump into bed with each other. I would like to know why there wasn't more done with that relationship. We all know that Valve has few nice things to say about the Xbox platform.

i don't think sony spendt almost 400million just to load demos faster. they have some thing big planned for sure.

This definitely has lots of implications, but who knows if Sony's execution will make a significant impact on the industry as a whole. That being said, I successfully played a 30-minute demo of The Witcher 2 through Gaikai and it ran beautifully. So at least Gaikai's current infrastructure is sophisticated enough for broadband-speed internet.

I definitely can't see the next gen going fully cloud gaming but I can certainly see this as a next step as the infrastructure continues to improve.

I've never heard of this Gaikai before.

I've played around with cloud gaming with the business class internet we have at work. Still kinda wonky.

I was hoping for a picture of MDK (Mission Deliver Kloud gaming), but oh well. Sacrifices made. Don't need a messiah complex.

PS4 is like OnLive am confirmed!

I've only briefly looked at the comments made thus far, but I'm glad to see people considering the deployment of this streaming gaming tech on the PS Vita. I don't think this would be something to benefit current PS3 owners. I would imagine this being done in a way to allow people to play their PS4 games on the Vita. So let's say you buy your new copy of "The Very Last of Us," register the game on PSN and you're able to stream your game when you're on the go with your Vita. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but if it does happen I'll feel pretty smart.

i used ONLIVE for a while and loved it , with a lower spec laptop and a high bandwidth connection meant i got incredible smooth game play on hundreds of decent games. Due to the nature of my life/job means i am not always able to bring my PlayStation with me, however my laptop and phone (xperia play) are always with me, so whenever i can find a bit of wi-fi i can crack on with some higher spec games rather than a boring 2d flash based game. With this partnership this could mean that no longer i am playing video games for no reason and instead my playtime going towards earning PlayStation trophies. This could possibly extend the life of the PlayStation by proving higher spec games on a lower spec device?

@raikoh05: eh, my friend is on basic DSL and he does just fine with On Line and he's in a semi-rural area.

If this actually made it on to the Vita i would be damn impressed. And not at all annoyed about the lack of content right now, depending on what the actually produce for this service.

Although i bet they would make it a PS+ thing,not that i would blame them at all for that.

Unless they improve the technology, this isn't very exciting for me. Playing the gaikai demos on Origin isn't that great.

I don't see this working for me; my connection struggles with streaming video, let alone a game. Alongside the input lag, it'd probably be unbearable.

As soon as I saw that cloud gaming picture I knew it was Alex Navarro.

Where the fuck is Year of the Cage, Alex?

@Fascismo: Shockingly, no! I just found it on Google Image Search. I ain't got that kind of time!

I bet Sony will begin implementing the Gaikai Tech with Playstation Mobile then move on up. But will it be implemented properly?

Did.. did Alex go through the effort of photoshopping smoke into 40 Year Old virgin so he could make a pot joke? They weren't high in that scene

Quite a dear purchase....

No plans to ever use cloud based gaming.

thats true.

and thats why its just added content next to what u currently have, im sure sonys not going stream only.

I used OnLive a little bit and liked it but then I bought a new computer so I didn't need it anymore when I heard about Gaikai, I tried that too and it worked even better than OnLive. I like cloud gaming and I think really good things can be done with it, like playing cinematics off it or using it to cover load times by playing the game in the cloud while it loads on your console/computer.

This sounds great, if there is a psn plus account that works like netflix with a huge sony catalogue I do not see the down side.

ahh alex you joker CLOUD GAMING! HAHA youre hilarious, I was actually imagining a picture of cloud from FF7, on a couch holding a PS1 controller playing FF7. Now how about that, Cloud Gaming!

my favorite cloud game is Final Fantasy 7

100ms+ round-trip input lag, minimum sucks.

anyway, ISPs are moving towards pay-per-GB models for bandwidth. Anything cloud related is at odds with that. One thing for sure is that the consumer is going to get fucked. The big corps are just arm wrestling over who gets the first turn.

i must be one of the few but i think this is a smart move not just for cloud gaming but more for the infrastructure of cloud gaming. Having game saves, save states, demos or anything that can be locked to a profile up in the cloud would be great to have.

Netflix sucks balls the video and audio quality is like tin can and string while looking at a fuzzy ass picture on one of those slide show projectors.

I go get the fucking blurays at a rental place since netflix looks like ass.

I do not want to stream a video game over the internet with your crap online compressed ass laggy netflix like video quailty sony so fuck you sony wont be happening.

That is also why I buy fucking Cds Mp3 and compressed crap sound like ass im not paying for that crap.

David Perry get it done.

I use Onlive all the time. With a 12/2 connection on comcast I've never had lag or graphics issues unless using WiFi (and even then not often).

Ive been a part of and seen what cloud based gaming can do for over a year now and it's pretty great when handled correctly. If sony can correctly implement this with their own library that would be amazing

There still doesn't seem a great deal of sense to this. Not every country they're looking to sell their devices in has the infrastructure to support cloud gaming.

@Abendlaender said:

This has to be the most restrained headline that Alex ever put up.

I know, right? I thought this was a Patrick article, but I guess Alex couldn't find some snarky headline to put up (and I mean that in a good way).

@Stimpack said:

I don't use cloud gaming, because currently it's still trying to get off the ground imo. This Sony move was the right way to go, er, hopefully. Sony is kind of notorious for branching out and making new and innovative products only to completely drop support a couple of months later. Cloud gaming couldn't have taken off without backing. Gaikai already stated that their games would be able to stream through smart TVs (which would fare better than PCs, I believe) but the released titles would be dependant on the the television manufacturer. This severely cripples what they could do, and Sony could certainly remedy that.

Hopefully since Kaz Hirai has taken over, he can reverse Sony's misfortune over the past few years.

I don't use cloud gaming, because currently it's still trying to get off the ground imo. This Sony move was the right way to go, er, hopefully. Sony is kind of notorious for branching out and making new and innovative products only to completely drop support a couple of months later. Cloud gaming couldn't have taken off without backing. Gaikai already stated that their games would be able to stream through smart TVs (which would fare better than PCs, I believe) but the released titles would be dependant on the the television manufacturer. This severely cripples what they could do, and Sony could certainly remedy that.

I've tried out plenty of OnLive and Gaikai, and while it's sorta cool being able to play current games on crappy hardware and being able to peer in on other people's games as they play them, the lag of the gameplay and the muddiness of the images really kills any desire I'd have to abandon native hardware. The threat of being throttled by my ISP and the complete loss of my rights as a consumer (no more selling, trading or modding) doesn't help either.

That said, this Sony/Gaikai deal could be really awesome if they go all in and make it so that you could play your downloaded PSN games over the cloud with your PS3, PSVIta, PC, Phone and Tablet. Uncharted on my computer? Yes please.

I don't use cloud streaming anything, because I'm sure my internet usage would spike through the fucking ceiling. Being in Canada (Ontario to be specific) the prices and caps on bandwidth here are an astronomical nuisance that guarantees I'm streaming little in the run of a month. I was paying $40-$50 overage on a month when I first got Netflix, because it defaults to HD and my fiance would just come home and watch a bunch of TV shows or a movie and suck up the gigs.

Until the ridiculous strangle hold on bandwidth is lessened to a significant degree, there's no way I'd ever do the streaming games thing. Downloadable only fits into this category too. I buy and play way too many games in the run of a month to afford downloading these huge games regularly. I feel like that's something these "DIGITAL ONLY FUTURE RAAAWR!" people don't really get. It's simply nowhere near cost effective or feasible for people in my situation, which I'm going to go ahead and assume is most Canadians.

@Sooty said:

@MikkaQ said:

My problem with cloud gaming is that as soon as you have a connection good enough for it, you might as well download the game to your own hardware cause it's only gonna take a couple hours at most.

I can download a 15GB game in like 18 minutes and my connection is actually slow (60MB) compared to those Swedish fuckers.

Yeah it's no wonder the Swedes are so big on piracy, they've been able to download whole movies in seconds for years now. Internet in Canada sucks. I had a great provider of cable, no cap, and insane speeds for a few months, but then school let up and I moved out, now it's a shitty 60GB monthly cap and slowish cable.

Right now, my understanding is that you can't offer a 'full multiplayer' or MMO experience on a 4G mobile device, because the signal basically isn't fast enough to push all that information. At best you can offer an asynchronous experience in a major game, like for example Dark Souls, or a complete experience in a simple game.

I could see Cloud gaming improving on that. As long as they can get the video stream and the controls 1:1 - itself a major task, and probably requiring some visual filtering software on the device - then the network interaction for everything else on the back end could just happen on the servers with no lag. How much 'everything else' there is is debatable, but we could start seeing physics not be unique to each player in Multiplayer games, for example. I don't think many people realize that a lot of the stuff that happens with 3D models isn't identical for each player in most games currently, and as a result, there's no gameplay dimension to a lot of the 'physics stuff' in multiplayer games. I mean Age of Conan is about the only MMO that's even really attempted player collision, because even precise placement of players is something every MMO currently struggles with, never mind physics. So there is room for cloud gaming to help conventional games improve, too, if some designer really thinks outside the box about what they can put on the server side.

That's not a thing that Gaikai or Onlive can really do, but it is a thing Sony could do with an in-house game when they have the technology. Unfortunately they are not known for making deep multiplayer or MMO experiences. We'll see.

For conventional gaming, I'm really not interested in streaming at all. I used to download stuff on a 14.4 modem from BBSes - I'm ok with waiting a while before I can play something. I think this is early, early proof of concept technology, long before it will really contribute to gaming. It's like the Power Glove as compared to a Wiimote, or the Virtual Boy as compared to a 3DS.

I thought OnLive was a cool concept and was glad that they dropped the monthly fee for it. Unfortunately for them I decided to build my own gaming rig to play anything, rather than their (at the time) limited selection, but I can see it being a great way to go for people who don't drop $3k on a PC. Assuming Gaikai is similar, this could bring better graphics to PS users regardless of the hardware they've got.

@crusader8463 said:

More like Bu-gaikai! Get it?

No

If by "cloud gaming," you mean "playing games via the cloud," then I currently have no interest in that as my devices are all more than powerful enough to handle such things. Perhaps in the future.

However, if you mean "saving settings and save files over the cloud," then put that in absolutely everything I own. A local save + a cloud save = I don't have to worry about a hard drive dying.

I really think, if done right this could answer the question of backwards compatibility on the PS4, you link all your owned games to the service, and maybe a subscription of the entire line up. I think this would save them money on the hardware side of the PS4.

Alex you owe me five bucks because I'm sure anyone who thinks of that kind of image in their head when they think "cloud gaming" isn't smart enough to even read.

" We bought Gaikai because gamers have kept asking for Cloud on their PS3 since E3 2005. Only just realised they meant a FFVII HD remake" 
-Kaz twitter parody

Great, now I can spend even more time on the clouds.

Is onlive available? I've read hundreds of stories about it but didn't know if it had moved that much beyond the theory and a few news releases.

I can get about 2.5 mbs but it varies depending on what devices are active (as well as the time of day). My friends with FIOS can get about 6 mbs, not sure about the variability but I assume it's there. Seems like the telecom companies are quickly maxing out what they are able to provide, and that can't be good news for a service like this.

What type of speed you will need to have to run this type of system, and how they can address the peaks and valleys that all users have.

if this is part of PS+, then cool.

This has to be the most restrained headline that Alex ever put up.