As OnLive struggles, Sony reveals it's working with Gaikai to resolve issues around cloud gaming

In the battle of the cloud gaming companies Gaikai, headed up by Earthworm Jim designer Dave Perry, is the clear winner.

Last month Sony shelled out a whopping $300 million for the company. Last Friday OnLive collapsed, sacking half its staff and selling all its assets to a new investor amid reports of just 1800 concurrent users.

This morning, cloud gaming's star seems dimmed. But for Sony, proud owner of Gaikai, its belief in the potential for the tech remains unhindered.

"Definitely we see huge potential that cloud gaming can bring to the PlayStation ecosystem," Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida told Eurogamer at Gamescom last week.

[remanutd55]

yes im intrigued to see what Gaikai means for us (playstation users)?

[HammadTheBeast]

PS Vita playing PS3/4 games? Hopefully.

[ElitaStorm]

they should rename Gaikai InstaPlay

this is just my opinion

[ChronoJoe]

InstaPlay isn't the greatest name in my opinion but I don't consider Gaikai to be a good one either.

[yesmynameissumo]

I think Sony is going to do some pretty killer things with Gaikai.

[pandaboy]

Maybe, but Sony are the sort who do these things slowly. They should have everything set and ready for a complete launch of Gakai with the ps4, but most likely they will have little bits and pieces of infrastructure that build gradually over time yet unfortunately allowing a competitor to capture the market first. It happened with motion control and online gaming. Sony were just too slow and lost the market.

[hennessey86]

First they need
to get it working, I have a 60mb connection and I get lag. During the announcement onlive said you would need about six to get 720p and 10 times that still isn't good enough. From what I have played on gaikai it seems better but still needs improvement.

[LostDjinn]

"First they need
to get it working, I have a 60mb connection and I get lag. During the announcement onlive said you would need about six to get 720p and 10 times that still isn't good enough. From what I have played on gaikai it seems better but still needs improvement."

Online lag can never be completely done away with. If you're suffering lag at the bandwidth you say it'll be your ping. The only way to fix that is to move closer to the exchange.

The more you know...

[Dark_Overlord]

Connection speed is not the only thing to consider, ping, packet loss, distance from exchange etc all contribute to lag :)

[Gamefan12]

I love how you guys say PING, it is not ping it is latency you are referring too. Ping is just a protocol that checks if the other side is "alive" ( it can do a few more things but that is the common use ). During the ping it can tell you how long it took to get there and back ( latency ).

[TheRealHeisenberg]

@ Gamefan12

http://media.photobucket.co...

[Xperia_ion]

Sony won a format war and cloud gaming. No question mark needed Sony has won cloud gaming, congrats to the dead company /s.

[shutUpAndTakeMyMoney]

How have they won? They haven't even made a red cent from Gaikai yet.. Let's just hope MS doesn't do it since they are way better at marketing.

Not to mention Gaikai uses 8GB bandwidth on my pc.

[blackbirdi]

Hope they will use it just for demos i hate Download coz o Don t Have enough space on my HDD

[KwietStorm]

You run into space issues for demos? I can't believe where we are and people are still having this problem. The hard drive was one of the first things I changed when I got my PS3, and that was in 2007. You can only do yourself some good by getting a bigger hdd. Highly recommend it.

[blackbirdi]

my problem is i have to many games...and second i prefer to buy a game or two instead of hdd because i don't have enough money ... i m not working just A POor student

PS: the average instlation is about 3 to 5 GB and games like rage and Metal gear solid have 8GB ..and please don't forget all this huge patches and DLC stuff

[BlackTar187]

You gotta delete some old game files to make room.

You can't seriously be working on a major rotation of more then 2-5 games can you?

[NeoTribe]

You really think they bought the 300m company just to over you demos via cloud? Comeon...

[AngelicIceDiamond]

Hmm it was only a matter of time until Onlive was gonna fall apart. A cloud service gaming platform doesn't have strong legs enough kegs on it own. Sony saw this, and capitalized on buying Gaikai before they get shut down in the near future. Again, great strategy by Sony.

[palaeomerus]

Buying something that can't survive before it fails for $300,000,000 is a great strategy?

[AngelicIceDiamond]

Yeah? Gaikai probably would of suffered the same fate if Sony didn't pick them up.

:Update Onlive still lives thanks to a recent buy out. But, if nobody came through and acquired them, they would be no more.

Btw sorry for the spelling errors.

[chukamachine]

If your a broadband user not on fiber optic and have high speed, but gaming feels wrong, laggy etc.

The problem is interleaving, it's a method to cut down on errors, but instead causes jumps in ping and slowdown in gaming. I had it bad for awhile, but told my isp to switch it off.

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/...

Read it.

[Lvl_up_gamer]

I think part of the reason why Onlive failed or is failing is due to their late start this gen. All of the Onlive games are multiplat games and at this stage in this generation a large portion of the gaming demographics own a console where those games have been already purchased and played on their current console which for the last year or so have been very affordable.

Onlive may have a greater chance at the beginning of next gen when multiplats are going to be bigger and better than today's games and will still only cost the price of what Onlive is now vs having to buy a $400 next gen console first. Onlive could be a suitable substitute until a family or individual can afford the cost of a next gen console till the prices of next gen consoles start to get cheaper which could be a couple years down the road of next gen.

[urwifeminder]

With sony in financial probs i think it was a bad decision to buy it,when a similar thing could have been made in house .

[hazelamy]

but the big issue will always remain, that of never owning what you buy.

[JoySticksFTW]

I hear you, but I think of it as netflix.

I don't own those movies, but can watch them whenever I want.

When the subscription ends, so does my access. It's fair.

Any game or movie that I really want, I just go buy to own it.

[Jazz4108]

Cloud gaming has way to many things against it for it to pay off soon. This was a waste of money for sony who can hardly keep its head above water.

[ajax17]

Even if I had fast enough internet for it, I still wouldn't want to stream games. I like to actually own the physical disc and case! Plus there is is the possibility of hackers, internet going down, maintenance, etc.