Sony may be teaming up with a leading “cloud gaming service”, if a report on VG247 is to be believed. The rumour originally emerged as part of an off-the-cuff remark made by editor Patrick Garratt in an E3 predictions post, but the site has since followed up with a separate article focusing on the rumour.
The site isn’t sure which of the major cloud gaming services are on board, but it flags both OnLive and Gaikai as potential candidates.
Sony has briefly mentioned the possibility of bringing cloud gaming services to PlayStation in the past, when current Sony Computer Entertainment president Andrew House talked up the potential of delivering “legacy content” via the emerging technology.
The rumour has surfaced at a time when various Sony employees have been talking up this month’s PlayStation Plus offering on Twitter, prompting speculation that the platform holder is about to add an on-demand streaming service to its premium subscription offering.
Apparently, all will be revealed at E3.
[source vg247.com]
Comments 9
that is a pretty awesome tweet. I'm excited. This would absolutely blow me away if it was a cloud streaming rental service. 5 bucks to play a new game for a few days. That would revolutionize things for me. I'd drop gamefly and their shipping times like a bad habit.
So I better get some PS Plus then.
There were other Sony employees Tweeting a similar thing yesterday too. Honestly, it could just relate to a good deal, but if VG247 is right, I'd be surprised if these weren't linked.
My guess is that they're going to allow you to play legacy PSone and PS2 content on-demand via your Plus subscription. That sounds reasonable doesn't it?
@get2sammyb I would be okay with that, although I would get more use out of trying newer games. Are you guessing there will be a catalogue we can access and play for free — or that we pay to play on top of our plus subscription?
@Squiggle55 It's just speculation on my behalf, but my guess is they would have a catalogue of games that you could access at any time as part of your Plus sub. I don't think they would actually bring something like OnLive to the PS3 (or Vita), because that could hurt actual software sales on the platform.
My guess is they're partnering with either OnLive or Gaikai to use their technology, rather than their service.
If they are worried that allowing people to rent games directly through them would hurt their software sales then I think they are missing an opportunity to completely rejuvenate/revolutionize the gaming community. Surely they realize that allowing people to rent a brand new game for 5 bucks would lead to millions of impulse rents from people who weren't going to buy the game and, if the game is any good, many follow up purchases or extended rentals. The brick and mortar rental stores are dying, and Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo should take their place and rent me their games directly to my living room.
The infrastructure is already there on PSN for PS+ 60 min. full game trials. Make it a 48 hour full game trial and charge 5 bucks.
In the general scope of things it sounds like a reasonable claim. Sony have looked into the digital side of gaming quite a lot... the PSP Go, Plus cloud saves, and more recently, adding big game releases to the store as digital downloads. All of these things would suggest Sony will go further into the digital market, especially with PS4... Cloud gaming could easily be a part of that I'd say, and an interesting part at that.
Having tried OnLive, I can't say it's something which interests me, given the poor video quality of that service. And if it's for PS1/PS2 games, that can forget it completely - no interest whatsoever.
Do you think that tweet by Ross McGrath might have been talking about the "Ultimate Editions" going on sale on PSN tomorrow? Hopefully not, because I'm still hoping for those cloud rentals.
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