So it’s pretty much confirmed that Sony and Gaikai are going to team up at E3, and that rang a not terribly distant bell in my head.
Let’s skip a few months back to January this year and to a CES panel at which Nanea Reeves, chief product officer for Gaikai, made one heck of a prediction. To be fair, we wrote it off, but we might have been very, very wrong to do so.
“Not all of the current console makers will have one more generation,” said Reeves, “that will be the big news at E3.”
Now, it all makes sense. Presumably Gaikai and Sony were working on some kind of streaming service back in January, so were Gaikai privy to Sony’s future plans? Is Reeves going to be proved very right in just a few days time.
And here’s the real question: will there be actually be a PlayStation 4?
wick15
I don’t think this means no PS4. It’s just Sony opening up new ways to play games. They would be mad to not release another PlayStation.
Game Streaming is great, but it eats bandwidth. Not only that, but not everyone in the UK (including myself) have access to fast broadband capable of streaming these games in HD. It’s not viable for them to go all out on streaming. Also, the best thing about a console is it’s ease of use. It would become such a hassle to take it anywhere, especially if you had to keep connecting it to the internet all the time.
I’m pretty confident in saying that this is just an addition to the PS family and not the future of the brand. Certainly not yet.
Bilbo_bobbins
definitely, and not something I would do. I want to play locally not on the interweb of doom
rossthebassist
I cant remember where i read it, so please forgive me if it was a speculative idea or something.
i recall reading something a while back that would combine streaming tech with localized play on a console…. which would visually at least boost the graphical look of the game.
BrendanCalls
All the people complaining that they haven’t got the speeds or limits to stream games, unfortunately this is the tipping point at where we all begin to suffer for a distinct lack of investment in technology from decades of successive governments. Lots of other parts of the world are fully prepared for this type of advancement and just because the UK isn’t doesn’t mean Sony should wait.
The advantages they could gain in other parts of the world probably dwarf the loss they would/could endure in the UK.
Klart
Let me make another assumption: this streaming thingy will be announced for the VITA (as well): suddenly a whole catalogue of PS3 games comes available…
ron_mcphatty
Well I can only get 2.5mbps in my block of flats so unless I sell up that means no streaming games for me. I can’t even watch iPlayer in HD :(
FRUIT0FDOOM
Please please please let this be in addition to all other methods of gaming! Sony just testing the water so to speak! I want PS4, I want limited edition Uncharted games that I can hold. I don’t want streaming…..EVER! Only recently became convinced to allow games to reside on my HDD as 0101001111001’s instead of solid discs…but at least I still own them!
TSBonyman
There will absolutely not be a Playstation 4 – haven’t you heard? – they’re calling it Orbis instead! ;)
The Lone Steven
I look forward to not being able to play my games due to maintance or getting signed out of the network in the middle of a major battle in a RPG./sarcasm
Judging from SCEE’s piss poor management of PSN, i think Gaikas would be ten tiems worse. Unless Gaikas are in charge of the streaming and maintaning of the service. They will have trouble selling a streaming only console as many of us gamers love the good old fashioned physical copy and that new game smell. That and the UK is not ready for streaming major games.
Kaminari
Most people don’t seem to realize that, in order to stream video games, you only need a crude set top box with a video chip capable of decoding H264. Even the crappiest PC with a decent graphic card and a cheapo gamepad can do that. You basically watch a heavily compressed video of a distant server running your game session in pseudo realtime.
Some factors cannot be significantly improved, namely:
1. video compression
2. control lag
as both depend on the network speed, and even a 100 Mb connection doesn’t provide an experience comparable to a HD console running the game locally.
It’s like trying to watch a 360p YouTube movie on Sunday afternoon, and pretending it’s the same quality as a home Blu-ray player.
Foxhound_Solid
streaming won’t work for me.