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Sony close to agreeing cloud gaming acquisition

It doesn't need to be anywhere near the speed of light... Your most responsive action games already have a 30-50ms delay and you don't even notice it. That can be achieved through cloud gaming. It's just a matter of time.

when you play locally there is only a minimal input delay. with a streaming service you not only add to that additive delay from the streaming but also the input travelling over the internet. if you were lucky and have a local server farm serving the game then it would only be, say 20ms but you need to react to the video so in all well over 100ms. and they would need to have server farms everywhere to even have it that good
 
If and when cloud gaming takes off, then there wouldn't be a need for Sony or anyone else to make video game consoles anymore. Sony would be killing off it's console business by introducing it's own cloud gaming service. But better they do it then wait until someone else does and then have to play catch up in the future.

Your TV is the console
 
why waste money on this??
they should spend it on advertising psvita or beefing up ps4 specs! i heard ps4 is a big step behind loop!

I'm not sure if Sony is keen on repeating the same mistake it made with the PS3. They can't really afford to over engineer the PS4 and sell it at retail for a loss or sell you a console that costs about $700 plus dollars.
 
Eh, personally I don't care for streaming or cloud gaming. I want physical media, dammit. Still, it'll be interesting to see what Sony plans to do with this.
 
Playstation branded TVs with game streaming (PS Cloud) built in as standard?

We know that they are juggling about with a chip sets and what not for the PS4 so it's not as if this is Sony's plan for next gen...., but who knows what lies beyond.

This really could change everything.

...., or nothing.










Either way I hope this gives Sony's share price a jolt at the very least. Man alive .
 
I think cloud gaming certainly has a future in gaming, so this could put them in a good position 5-10 years from now. I'm just not sure how well this will work in the immediate future...part of the reason Sony would benefit from having full game trials is due to their insane file sizes and clumsy install process. It seems like it could be a great sales tool but part of the benefit just addresses issues that Sony introduced themselves.
 
I think MS will do something similar.

I'm not excited about cloud based gaming, but there are a lot of different things they could do with it, so it will be interesting to see.

My concern is that there will be a lot of overhead costs expanding and maintaining the servers.
 
If this is something Sony is going to add to the ps3 and vita, it could be significant. Especially if its most of the ps2/ps3/psp back catalog. If they are cheap enough and you are in an area without bandwidth caps, you have no reason not to get a vita.
 
could be a TV thing. Weren't LG showing something similar with their smart TVs. Sony have been a bit behind both LG and Samsung with their smart solutions.

If you could pair a dualshock with a TV and play PS3 games it'd be interesting. Although you'd need a PS3 at the other end, whereas with PCs you can virtualise them to some extent.
 
Which ISP's have caps here? I've had Time Warner and FiOS and neither of them have it.

two of the biggest ones, Comcast has 300 GB and ATT has 150 for DSL and 250 for uverse. All the other ones may not be disclosing caps to customers but I guarantee they are doing throttling at certain usage and will be following suit with official caps real soon.

My comcast usage for the month

May 2012 Data Usage Included Used Remaining
79%
As of 5/30/2012*
250GB 198GB 52GB

Thats just with netflix. I haven't download many games, think the biggst was the Resistance Vita demo at 3 Gigs. If i still had ATT as my ISP I would have been over and socked a $30 fee.
 
Why would they limit it to SONY branded anything. They will make money off the Plugin like an App. So While it will come pre-loaded with a controller on your TV set it will work on any device that allows a plugin.

Sony should whore this out to every TV, and Bluray player out there. They would have much more broad appeal than limiting itself to Sony OnLy devices..
 
when you play locally there is only a minimal input delay. with a streaming service you not only add to that additive delay from the streaming but also the input travelling over the internet. if you were lucky and have a local server farm serving the game then it would only be, say 20ms but you need to react to the video so in all well over 100ms. and they would need to have server farms everywhere to even have it that good

It's already at around 150ms, and this is NOW. With servers not even well distributed. Now imagine how it will be in 10 to 20 years... Where everyone has fiber optic connections, and server clusters will be everywhere.
 
it's self defeating anyway. the experience of playing a game over video streaming is so terrible it will crash and burn within months with a flood of complaints about how the video looks like shit, glitched, input lagged, etc

If the service isn't lag-free off the bat, which it won't be, I have to agree with you.

Nextbox having flawless BC whilst PS4 will have to be ad-based, subscription based service that is laggy as their BC solution doesn't sound like a winning strategy to win back marketshare. Supporters best comeback is to "wait until 10-20 years time". . . really?

Maybe they won't use this to stream games, but rather to stream advertisements over the top of your disc games

Why would anyone stay online then unless it's always-online DRM (like Diablo3) to make the ads work whether you like it or not.
 
Smart move by Sony, this way they get 100% of the cut from the sales. Its basically another system for them and could potentially revive their TV division and differentiate it from the rest.
 
I'm not sure if Sony is keen on repeating the same mistake it made with the PS3. They can't really afford to over engineer the PS4 and sell it at retail for a loss or sell you a console that costs about $700 plus dollars.

The rumors about the PS4 still peg it as being a beefy system that will probably result in them losing money to sell it. With that said, people really need to take the Blu-ray into account when talking about the PS3's cost. The PS3 was the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market for around a year after its release. And it was also generally viewed as the best BR player on the market, so it wasn't even cheaply designed.
 
why would internet speeds need to be anywhere near the speed of light?
all that has to happen is to have a internet connection that can stream 1080p/60fps video perfectly and then cloud gaming becomes perfectly viable.

Input lag. It will always take a certain amount of time for input to reach the server, being processed and then have the result appear on your screen.

The speed of light is the limitation he's talking about here. Of course in reality there are tonnes more.
 
The more I hear the more I dont know if this is a brilliant move by sony or something completely crazy and stupid.


Still not interested in streaming games... maybe for older games but the IQ hit I get playing modern PC games over streaming isnt worth it. Plus its a uphill battle fighting bandwidth caps
 
Nextbox having flawless BC whilst PS4 will have to be ad-based, subscription based service that is laggy as their BC solution doesn't sound like a winning strategy to win back marketshare. Supporters best comeback is to "wait until 10-20 years time". . . really?

The hell are you talking about? Not only am I not a supporter, but that wasn't a comeback to anything.

Also, where did you get the ad-based part?
 
PS4 games on PS3 and Vita. Why not - for people not so discerning about perfect visuals it could be a godsend feature.

when you play locally there is only a minimal input delay. with a streaming service you not only add to that additive delay from the streaming but also the input travelling over the internet. if you were lucky and have a local server farm serving the game then it would only be, say 20ms but you need to react to the video so in all well over 100ms. and they would need to have server farms everywhere to even have it that good
When you play a 30FPS game on a console, typical input delay is 100-130ms. Than whatever TV processing adds on top of that. People live with it and there's not much complaining. Keep in mind, internet lag would not add on top of that because on a fast PC that kind of input lag wouldn't exist in the first place, so internet lag would be added on top of something much less.

With their Grid thing, Nvidia and Gaikai have demonstrated to be able to deliver just about that much lag over typical internet connection, so that problem is essentially solved already.
 
I wasn't talking about you.

You don't think Sony are planning on ads? There was a thread of it.
Well I was the only one that said 10 to 20 years...

And you mean that patent from 2011 that means nothing? Patents are registered for everything. If you really think Sonys next console/service will have games being interrupted to play ads...
 
This sounds like it's going to be a really bold move from Sony. As long as they can demonstrate that it works well and that it's worth the investment, I'm all for it.

However, I'm not sure acquiring a company like this is a smart move when you're in the process of losing billions of dollars.
 
I wasn't talking about you.

You don't think Sony are planning on ads? There was a thread of it.

It was a patent.

And lol @ saying flawless game streaming on "Nextbox" when they pretty much milked advertisements on console this generation (even if you paid them with subscription!).
 
What if Sony is working on Backend deals with ISP's take for example Comcast and Verizon in the US. Traffic from their datacenters to your home cost next to nothing for them. It's when you go outside their routing that all the charges apply.

So what if Sony build or makes a deal with ISP's to host datacenters in their centers? Thus allowing the customers streaming bandwidth for the service not count against their caps and minimizing latency. for multiplayer games you would still get capped as it's going outside them but you already have this now..

Maybe the ISP gets a small % for allowing this basically subsidizing the service and getting comcast, verizon newer users in the process..
 
My interest is piqued, but remains uncertain. I think this is an absolutely amazing addition to the Vita. Imagine being able to stream GT5 to the little screen.

I imagine the service to have PC's that offer PS3 quality visuals (8800 GT, 512mb ram) and the current library for stream as long as you purchase off the PlayStation Network. This is a really forward thinking design and should be applauded.

Latencybedamned.
 
Think about it this way: With Gaikai/OnLive onboard they can have BC on PS4 with practically every third party game released on PC in the last 10 years, with practically no effort at all in the porting/HDremake/emulator space.

Fill in with some remastered first party titles.
 
My concern is that there will be a lot of overhead costs expanding and maintaining the servers.

My biggest concern is how they handle old/unpopular games. You pay for access to a particular game and then one day they just shut it off or take it off the server? Because that would suck.
 
Short term its pretty silly, but as more and more physical media dies out sony could look like a genius for getting the patents and the technology while they were still cheap. It all really depends on how the switch happens. I just wonder if Sony is in the position to handle long term risks.
 
Love it, brilliant idea Sony. If they go this route instead of having to mass produce PS4s with really expensive hardware in them they would save so much money. I don't think they can go just that way because of internet speeds just yet, but they can make a hardware box and a stream-only box and still save a lot of money.
 
It is inevitable that Sony, Microsoft and probably Valve will eventually offer cloud gaming. If this is true it will just be a lot earlier than most expected. I have no problem with it as long as it is an option.

Hopefully this will mean that eventually I would be able to stream PS1,2,3 & 4 games bought on PSN to my Vita eventually.
 
Is this real life?
 
So. . . it indicates they're interested in having ads. In conjunction with the recent news about streaming company deals I see it very likely they will try and reduce costs with ads.



BC != Streaming BC

You said they will have too do ads, implying that they are confirmed to be planning it when it could just be another patent that never sees the light of day.
 
I honestly think this will give the Vita a new lease on life. The damn thing needed something like this. A streaming service that will allow you to play games ANYWHERE in the world sounds like pure sex.
 
It's the bold and innovative step they needed to differentiate themselves, I welcome this as long as traditional gaming distribution stays alive.
 
What if Sony is working on Backend deals with ISP's take for example Comcast and Verizon in the US. Traffic from their datacenters to your home cost next to nothing for them. It's when you go outside their routing that all the charges apply.

So what if Sony build or makes a deal with ISP's to host datacenters in their centers? Thus allowing the customers streaming bandwidth for the service not count against their caps and minimizing latency. for multiplayer games you would still get capped as it's going outside them but you already have this now..

Maybe the ISP gets a small % for allowing this basically subsidizing the service and getting comcast, verizon newer users in the process..

Unlike Netflix, Hulu and other video services, cloud gaming has the benefit of not competing directly with the major cable companies. Time Warner and Comcast should be far more willing to work with someone like Sony to make sure their gameplay streaming works well for users. This is in stark contrast to services like Netflix that threaten their core business using their own network.
 
First time since the PSX era when Sony is the innovator but that is not important nowadays.

What is important is that Sony outdid Apple. PS3 and PS4 will offer out of the box streaming gaming FIRST, before Apple Game Console in the following years.

#gamechanger FOR REAL this time.
 
I'm actually pretty excited to see where something like this can go. There will of course be growing pains. etc. with something like this, but it'll be cool to see what they do with this.
 
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