Sony makes a huge announcement at their CES 2014 press conference conserning Playstation and Gaikai.
Remember when Sony announced that they had bought Gaikai in 2012 during their February 2013 Playstation 4 reveal? How about a few months later at E3 2013 when the service was mentioned again for a brief moment? Where has Gaikai gone? What are Sony plans for the service. At first it was thought that they bought Gaikai to help improve their streaming services. That was just only half right. Sony’s Shui Yoshida in an interview with Dengeki Online made the following statement:
“Speaking of the ultimate goal, we would like to deliver PlayStation games to all devices. So we’re considering various things like PC, TVs, Blu-ray players, smartphones and tablets. We hope to continue to expand not only to Sony devices, but even to devices other than Sony’s. This is still being studied. We previously spoke about PlayStation going from hardware to something closer to a service, regardless of the device — Of course PlayStation will still be the center, but I think we would like to expand to different things.”
It seems that Sony is one step closer to that goal. At their CES 2014 press conference on Tuesday, as President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Andrew House revealed Playstation Now:
To put it simply. Sony will be using the Gaikai tech that they have bought and use it to bring the Playstation library of games to tablets, smartphones, smart TV and other non-Sony devices. What does this mean for the Playstation brand and how will this effect gaming as a whole? In short, this is a game changer.
For year gamers have been crying out for the mythical “One Console” that plays every single game. Playstation Microsoft, Nintendo, it doesn’t matter, this “One Console” would play all of them. But the closest to that we have gotten was, of course, Gaikai and OnLive. While OnLive couldn’t gain enough traction, Gaikai proved that everyone can play PC quality games even though users may not have a monster of a PC. Now that Sony is using Gaikai to power Playstation Now, it will be possible to play Playstation games on non Playstation products. If this all sounds familiar, its because its Sony’s answer to Valve’s Steam service. This could revolutionize the way the gaming industry works.
If successful, consumers would no longer have to buy $500 consoles or spend more than $1k to build a computer. All they would have to do is pay a membership fee, sync up a controller to their computer, tablet or even TV and play. But with the current generation of consumers not wanting to let go of their physical media, its going to be a tough hill to climb. For now, Sony will be calling for beta testers at the end of this month and plans to roll out the service to the rest of the US by the end of the Summer.Source(s): Playstation Blog, DualShockers
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