Sony & Gaikai; The Plausible Reason

I don't know why, but suddenly it hit me.

Cloud gaming is the future. Convergence of technology is inevitable. Today, you can game on most devices we have out there, even the freezers! Or perhaps not the freezer, since those aren't really that portable. But Smartphones are taking over and you can play a lot of games on them these days.

But never mind that, what made me write this blog-post was a revelation that came to me in a dream. Sorry that was a lie. It came to me like a lightningbolt.

I believe Sony bought Gaikai for one purpose only. Lets go back to the ps3. What did the first editions of the hardware have that the following didn't? Backwards-compatibility. One of the most wanted features in a new console. Why was it removed?

Well, to put it like this. It made Sony bleed even more. It was so very expensive and they had to let it go. So you might wonder what Gaikai has to do with this? Well, let me tell you.

I believe that Gaikai will work very much like an MMO of some sort today, only with the difference that the service itself will not be a game. However, through Gaikai, and probably a monthly subscription, or as a Playstation Plus service (Free if you have PS Plus that is, and lets say 5 euros /dollars etc if you do not) Sony will give you a chance to play ANY ps3 game you have registered on your account through your ps4. The cost of a serverpark could easily be afforded through a service like this. They could easily set up different levels of the subscription where it costs 5 euros for ps3 games, 3 euros for ps2 and 1 euro a month for access to the games of each era. that would be a total of 10 euros, 10 dollars etc. for full backwards-compatibility with all of the games you have previously bought. Ofc, since many games from previous generations is not being sold anymore, you would be able to unlock them for like 1 euro/dollar etc.

Me personally would definately use this service.

The price of the ps4 would also be greatly reduced if BC wasn't built in the device. And I would also prefer that.

What do you guys think? I really do think that this is a very plausible reason to why Sony bought Gaikai. The service might be different but in general, I really hope that this is whats gonna happen.

[TopDudeMan]

As a PS plus member, I'm obviously going to want it to be free for PS plus users, but who knows what will happen? Good blog, very insightful.

[Hufandpuf]

I said this about cloud gaming in general when Onlive was just starting up with their PR.

http://n4g.com/news/865241/...

[Captain Tuttle]

I've read that it would be difficult to use Gaikai for BC. Apparently it's very hard to emulate the Cell on PC architecture so apparently you'd need one PS3 running as a server for each person using Gaikai for BC or something. I'm not very technical and I could have misunderstood but this popped up in some conversations about this over on GAF.

I don't know but BC for the PS4 using Gaikai makes alot of sense if it'll work.

[Godmars290]

Pretty sure Sony actually makes server blades based on the PS3.

Though really, am I one of the few who's not seeing a future where game publishers essentially still own games people buy? That this "convenience" will not only give them the ability to remove old titles if few people are playing them, but gives them closed and controlled market where they can charge anything they want.