A true gamechanging moment has happened in the video game industry as Sony has announced that they’ve bought Gaikai. Going into E3 this year there was quite a rumor storm brewing about Sony’s foray into the world of cloud gaming and that Gaikai would either be a major partner in such an endeavor or would be wholly bought. Obviously E3 came and went without any megaton Sony/Gaikai news yet here we are today with the two companies working together to possibly change the gaming landscape.
The deal between Sony and Gaikai, which saw Sony acquire the company for $380 million, will involve a new cloud gaming service being created in conjunction with Sony Computer Entertainment i.e. the PlayStation brand. Since the deal between the two companies was just finalized there aren’t any official plans or announcements concerning a future PlayStation cloud streaming service so we may need to wait until E3 2013 for such news.
Obviously this partnership is a big deal as it could have major impact not just on the PlayStation brand but gaming in general. It’s a shoe-in for a cloud service to appear on a future PlayStation platform, either to deliver new games to users or to provide an adequate solution to the always difficult task of figuring out backwards compatibility. But what will be interesting to see is how far Sony pushes their cloud gaming initiative and if we’ll see the company allow PlayStation games to be played on non-PlayStation devices such as Sony TV’s and other mobile devices. I assume that doing such a thing wouldn’t be that much of a tech hurdle for Sony or Galkai and in turn it could allow Sony to get the jump on the cloud gaming craze and become completely competitive instead of playing catch-up in a lot of areas.
It would’ve been a massive megaton if Sony announced this news at E3, but I assume deals need to be worked out since neither company officially commented on the matter when the rumors first surfaced. As gamers I think we should be excited about this news since it could allow us to play PlayStation classics whenever we want and without having to download a 16GB game. If the tech is worked out properly and Sony doesn’t do a similar thing as to when they initially launched the PlayStation Network (do a half-assed job) I’m sure that some actual goodness will come out of this partnership with Gaikai.
