Apropos of nothing in particular today…
Sean Hollister writing for The Verge in 2019:
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a video game platform that lets you play games with the press of a button, no need for discs or downloads… Experience the latest and greatest games on your ancient laptop, phone, or tablet, thanks to remote servers instead of having to buy a console or build a powerful gaming PC. Fire up a game on the TV, then seamlessly pick it up on your mobile device…
If that sounds like the lofty pitch for Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service, you’ve been paying attention. But every single one of those things was promised years ago by a startup named Gaikai — a startup that Sony bought in 2012 for $380 million. At the time, Sony gave every indication that it would harness the full potential of a PlayStation cloud. It even bought Gaikai’s closest competitor, OnLive, in 2015 and launched a service called PlayStation Now that finally hit 1 million subscribers this October. But half a decade later, the company has barely tapped into cloud gaming’s promise, and competitors like Google seem poised to attract the gamers that Sony failed to convert.
Sean Hollister
How Sony bought, and squandered, the future of gaming [theverge.com]
