My Expectation - Playstation 4 will be marketed as Streaming Hub

I am increasingly sure that Sony will be marketing the Playstation 4 as a revolutionary streaming hub. In other words, the Playstation 4 will let you stream its own processing power and media library to all of your mobile devices - so rather than streaming content off the cloud, the consumer will stream the content off his own hardware - the Playstation 4 - onto all manner of pre-existing handheld devices like iOS & Android smartphones and tablets, as well as the Playstation VITA.

Such a focus would also go hand-in-hand with a 99$ stripped-down version of the PS VITA, that's pretty much just the OLED touchscreen screen and all the regular interface elements (sticks & buttons & such), without processing power of its own - other than to enable streaming onto it - both in Wi-Fi and 3G, and that PS4's standard gamepad will have all interface elements of the VITA - like the touchpad and OLED touchscreen- present (and more of course). An own line of supercheap iPad-like devices, that synch-up with the Playstation 4 and use its processing power to achieve iPad-like functionality at home and on the go is also quite likely. Get the same functionality as an iPad, for the fraction of the price.

Overall - I think it's Sony's strategy to get heavily into the subsidised market and therefor attacking both Apple & Microsoft, on the mobile device front, as well as in the home entertainment front - by teaming up with ISPs and Cellular-service providers all over the world, to sell the Playstation 4 experience at a super competitive price (with the caveat of a service subscription).

Do you think there's something to this prediction? And is your home internet fast enough upload-wise to facilitate *streaming off your Playstation 4*? I've got like 600 KB/s upload on my connection, and anywhere I go on a regular basis, ping would be completely neglible - so that'd be baller. At very least for all manner of passive entertainment. Not sure about interactive entertainment & office functionality, but it should perform at least as well as Gaikai and OnLive does under perfect circumstances games-wise. I mean is anyone ever more than 100 miles from their home?

So Playstation "Smartglass", you have to buy a "$99" piece of hardware (limited by storage space) on top of a estimated $400 PS4. Errr dont really know about that, also its all about bandwidth and really not everyone has it.

ONE WORD GOOGLE FIBER AND ITS THERE

I dont know that Sony can really take any risks this time around, it would make more sense for them to straight up copy everyone elses best features again but cut it off at that, no frilly extras like dual O/S or multiple input/outputs. Sony need to be making money on every console sold and the more they cram into the system they higher the price gets, its going to be an intersting E3...

@kagato said:

I dont know that Sony can really take any risks this time around, it would make more sense for them to straight up copy everyone elses best features again but cut it off at that, no frilly extras like dual O/S or multiple input/outputs. Sony need to be making money on every console sold and the more they cram into the system they higher the price gets, its going to be an intersting E3...

It's pretty much a given that Sony will bank on streaming technology in some form, since it has put a 380 million dollar gambling chip on the table with the purchase of Gaikai. I think Sony can't take the risk of building up a global streaming infrastructure themselves, so it will have endconsumers and internet service provicers and cellular service providers do it for them - the customers are buying the hardware and service providers are subsidising the purchase in order to get data plan subscriptions/renewals out of it.

@DaMisterChief said:

So Playstation "Smartglass", you have to buy a "$99" piece of hardware (limited by storage space) on top of a estimated $400 PS4. Errr dont really know about that, also its all about bandwidth and really not everyone has it.

ONE WORD GOOGLE FIBER AND ITS THERE

I'm thinking the standard PS4 gamepad might double as *faux* VITA for every consumer, so Sony will be able to sell VITA software to every PS4 owner too - for consumption anywhere in their home via Wi-Fi network or whatever wireless tech it uses. The *mock* 3G streaming-only VITA without actual computing power innards seems like the perfect entry-level SKU for your daily commuting needs, if you want to stream full-on VITA or PS4 games on the go at the low low price of less than a hundred dollars.