The Internet Is Buzzing With Excitement Over Sony’s Gaikai Acquisition

Sony purchased Gaikai overnight and since the occurrence, the entire internet’s been buzzing with excitement over what the future holds for the PlayStation brand. We’ve included links to the more interesting articles below the break, including short quotes.

Eurogamer – In Theory: The Sony Gaikai Deal and What It Means for PlayStation

“There’s also a phenomenal opportunity for fundamental change here. In an era where many are beginning to doubt the sustainability of the £40/$60 boxed retail model, a shift to cloud gameplay could see the introduction of new pricing models: monthly subscriptions, game rentals, even “pay per minute” – Gaikai’s current billing strategy for partners using its demo programme. Sony has been very progressive with its PlayStation Plus offering, but it’s difficult to make the most of its current subscription offers when they are accompanied by multi-gigabyte downloads, lengthy installs and sometimes even patching. In these respects, Gaikai could change everything.”

kotaku – You May Already Own a PlayStation 4: The Sci-Fi Implications of Last Night’s Big Sony-Gaikai News

“The try-before-you-buy streaming model also leads to a most wonderful and appropriately-futuristic vision of PlayStation gaming to come. Currently, you can use Gaikai to run Mass Effect on Facebook. The processing of the game is happening far away. Your browser is, essentially, able to pretend to be a PS3. Extend the thought…extend it to E3 2013 and the likely reveal of the PlayStation 4. Imagine that you’re home and your PS3 is turned on. Maybe, by then, there’s a Gaikai app that lets you play old PS2 games through its streaming connection. Imagine the Sony executives saunter around on stage at E3, telling people about PS4 and showing a demo of a game. And then imagine that they say that you can load up that Gaikai app on your PS3 and that you’ll find something special there: a demo to stream of a PS4 game. “Go ahead,” they could say. “Try the PS4 right now, on your PS3.”

It could happen. It may sound sci-fi. But it also sounds very Sony PlayStation.”

VG247 – Clouded vision: what Sony will do with Gaikai

“That, I think, is how the Gaikai future will look. Not a replacement for your home console, but rather, more PlayStation in more places – an execution of a strategy that Sony’s been struggling to get its head around for the best part of a decade. Of course, there’s also one final reason why Sony bought Gaikai right now. It wanted to stop anyone else from doing it, and you can be sure that as well as Samsung, Gaikai was talking to plenty of other firms Sony considers to be rivals. That begs the next question – now that the acquisition party has started, who’s going to buy OnLive?”

Official PlayStation Magazine UK – What GaiKai means for PlayStation – how the cloud-save service will transform gaming

“But here’s the really exciting bit: you almost certainly won’t even need a PS4 to play those classic games, or indeed new ones. The Gaikai move further cements Sony’s switch to a ‘four screen strategy’ – first mooted by then-CEO Howard Stronger in late 2011 – where you can enjoy the company’s games not only on its traditional home console, but also tablet, phone and PC. (And have each sync with the other.)

So you might start a season of FIFA 16 on PS4, get kicked upstairs because the wife wants to watch Latvia’s Next Top Model and continue on PC, then continue on your mobile en route to work the next morning. This isn’t a pipe dream, either: EA is already in partnership with Gaikai, so football 24/7 is a very realistic prospect. And Need For Speed. And Battlefield. And so on.”

These are just some of the articles circulating gaming’s web after Sony’s momentous acquisition last night. Are you excited? As it stands, anything is possible. Anything.