Last year Sony made a huge move by purchasing Gaikai, gaming’s most recognized streaming property. While not much has happened since then, other than confirmation that the PS4 will support it in the future, it won’t be long before gamers can see what Sony has been working on behind the scenes.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Andrew House gave a release date estimate for Gaikai on PS4. He said:
We’re on track to have a commercial service up and running in the US first within 2014.
House described Sony’s goal with Gaikai:
But what’s important is to understand the full scope of what we’re trying to achieve and why we felt the Gaikai acquisition was important. Our goal is to be able to have a new form of game distribution streamed from the server side, initially to PS4 consoles then gradually moving that out to Vita. But eventually, the endgame is to have this available on a multitude of network-connected devices, essentially delivering a console-quality gaming experience on devices which are not innately capable of doing that.
Streaming has found its way onto the market under various packages, but it hasn’t come near to its potential, yet. Gaikai on PS4 is aiming to break down the hardware barrier by making the service readily accessible as long as you have a PS4 connected to the internet.
So what does this mean for gaming? Well, have you ever subscribed to a rental service such as GameFly? Imagine you can access any of the best games without waiting, installs, or high prices. Gaikai will provide instant access to games at a subscription price similar to Netflix. In other words, this is a big deal, and Sony is behind the steering wheel of what could be the next big thing in gaming.
