Sony’s CES Presentations Revolve around the Cloud
The Consumer Electronics Show is underway in Las Vegas and Sony’s presentations seemed to revolve around one thing: The cloud. Sony unveiled PlayStation Now which is a cloud service that instantly delivers games to consoles, tablets, smartphones and more. Sony also announced a new video service that will allow users to receive video on demand.
Back in 2012, Sony bought Gaikai for $380 million. Gaikai has essentially morphed into the new PlayStation Now service because Gaikai was an Asian provider of cloud gaming content. Andrew House is the president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment. His comments suggested that legacy PlayStation games including PS2 and PS3 games will available on the cloud. That means if you have a smartphone, a tablet a PS Vita or even a Sony Bravia, you will be able to play legacy PlayStation games through the cloud.
While the PlayStation Now service was a hit among the CES, Sony also talked about its video on demand service. It has been rumored that Sony has been trying to break into this market for years. At CES, Sony decided to finally make it official. Sony didn’t say too much about the service as far as specifics go. The company did say that the video on demand service will also include a live streaming service that uses the cloud. They expect this service to be live by the end of the year.
In order for Sony to remain competitive, this reach for the cloud was imperative. Market research shows that many consumers use their PS3s for streaming content from Netflix. Sony has decided to capitalize on this trend and offer video on demand in order to compliment the Netflix service and capitalize on its success. The cloud push by Sony is an obvious next step for the company. Microsoft is Sony’s main competitor and the Xbox One has already centered much of its functionality on the cloud. It would make sense that the PS4 would look to outdo the already available Xbox One.
