Sony has announced they have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Gaikai Inc for the sum of $380M. Gaikai’s claim to fame is an interactive cloud-based gaming service that allows any game to be streamed to a browser on a variety of internet-connected devices.
“SCE has built an incredible brand with PlayStation and has earned the respect of countless millions of gamers worldwide,” said David Perry, CEO of Gaikai Inc., “We’re honored to be able to help SCE rapidly harness the power of the interactive cloud and to continue to grow their ecosystem, to empower developers with new capabilities, to dramatically improve the reach of exciting content and to bring breathtaking new experiences to users worldwide.”
Sony intends to establish a cloud service and expand its network business by taking advantage of Gaikai’s technology and infrastructure including data centers servicing dozens of countries and key partners around the world.
What does it mean for gaming? In the near term this could certainly alleviate any long time complaints about the removal of backwards compatibility in the current version of the PlayStation 3. It’s entirely possible for Sony to offer their entire PS1 and PS2 library in a new service for PlayStation 3 owners. It could also open up the possibility of streamed demos, removing the need to clutter hard drives or even remove the need to experience a demo on a specific platform. Imagine being able to play a PS Vita demo on the PlayStation 3 or vice versa.
Longer term, this could reasonably be the main feature of a future console—probably not the initial PlayStation 4, but perhaps a budget revision of the hardware that has little to no internal storage and relies solely on the online service. This could feasibly be the exclusive method of gaming for the PlayStation 5, though such a move could also see all the success of the PSP Go.
Of course, while we’re speculating, let’s go into absurd territory: there’s also the wild possibility that Sony could use the service to create something along the lines of a subscription PlayStation service for virtually any device to play the entire library at any time. We’re almost at a point where everyone has sufficient access to a fast broadband connection, and a paid service giving access to Sony’s entire console library would likely go over well with gamers. That subscription fee would likely cover the hardware costs for amassing a sufficient number of systems to cover demand for any console or handheld platform the company has created.
Or they could totally fumble and use Gaikai for something stupid like a new version of PlayStation Home.
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