Somewhat true, but not entirely. OnLive for example, went belly up because they had vast server farms in sprawling data centers with tons of infrastructure. Some lesser graphically intense games could use shared resources on a custom hypervisor they built, but Steve Pearlman is on record stating that higher end PC titles (which mind you were running only at 720p on medium settings) required a 1:1 player/server (with dedicated CPU/GPU/RAM) in order to function correctly.
Shared resources, hypervisors, and all the elaborate tools someone like VMWare offers doesn't translate much at all when it comes to streaming video games. The biggest accomplishment that OnLive and Steve Pearlman did was inventing a very efficient protocol to trasmit frames, mouse/keyboard clicks. Very similar to what Citrix invented in the mid 1990s (ICA, later licened by MS and called RDP), just built from the ground up to stream video. Unfortunately for OnLive, the magic stopped there and the reality sank in that in order to serve up virtual content for in demand games, they needed that 1:1 back end footprint in the data centers. This is also why it took so long for them to start signing licensing deals for day 1 releases. They had to invest millions building data centers and by then it was too late. That and Steve was a buffoon and made a ton of mistakes near the end.
Gamestop bought a company that does something similar to OnLive... and you know where it is? I don't know, I was hoping you could tell me lol. Gaikai, prior to the Sony buy out had optimized their protocol even better than OnLive. But without a Sony buy out, Gaikai would have faced the same troubles. I would argue that Sony bought Gaikai for other reasons, like the OP says.. for integrated cloud services for social platforms etc.. things they can easily host in data centers and an affordable cost. But not for streaming video games, PS1, PS2, PS3 or PSN games.
Microsoft? Where are they in the cloud arena? Well, for 1 they've been in the "cloud" since the mid 1990s when they struck a deal with Citrix to buy Terminal Services and implemented it into Windows NT. Dave Cutler the guy who then practically invented Windows NT (which for those of you know dont' know turned into Wndows Server OS line), later when on to practically invent Azure.. which is Microsofts newest home grown cloud service that does things the competition can't. Oh and speaking of Dave Cutler, he was moved from the Azure team (when it was done) onto the Xbox division to work on cloud service and platform integration there now. Thats uh, thats pretty big news to say the least. The father of Windows Server OS's, and a cloud guru working specifically on Xbox.
Cloud is here to stay, but in different forms than some on GAF might be expecting. Do not expect streaming video games, at best that MIGHT be setup for just game demos on the fly (w/o needing to download them). Where you'll see the "cloud" on next gen gaming platforms will be with network connectivity, software as a service, and platform unification. Seemless features built into the console OS's that will function the same on several platforms, and just "work". Where Microsoft has the advantage is this is their home turf. They've been developing this technology for 20 years and its their bread and butter. If MS offers these kind of features they will all combine to feel as "one" service (Live). Everything will just "work" and flow, and operate like it was designed that way from the ground up. Where Sony may offer similar capabilities they will lack in uniform integration and services on the PS4 may feel independent, disconnected and suffer from not being architected together from the first line of code. What I mean is, Microsoft envisioned, designed and birthed Azure, Sony bought Gaikai.
I suspect that will be evident on these next gen consoles.
We'll find out soon enough.
). But since one model did, I never wanted to have the inferior model.
