Thu, Aug 02, 2012 | 13:49 BST

Sony buying Gaikai validates cloud gaming, says OnLive

Sony’s acquisition of Gaikai has brought legitimacy to cloud gaming, OnLive’s UK GM Bruce Grove has said, and it “will help drive the idea further.”

In an Edge interview, Grove said he believes the deal goes a long way to highlight cloud gaming as a major prospect for gaming.

“It has validated it”, Grove explained, “It’s good for us, good for the market and it will help drive the idea further. And Sony’s a consumer devices company so for them it’s an opportunity across all of that hardware.”

But Grove is unsure whether such a deal would be a good fit for OnLive, as he believes its service should not be limited to just one device.

“I think it kind of defeats the purpose of cloud gaming to limit [OnLive] to a subset of devices. The whole point of putting anything into the cloud is to make it available on everything.”

“The whole reason I have a Dropbox account is that I want to access my files from any device”, Grove continued, “It doesn’t matter whether it’s my Samsung phone or my iPad, PC or Mac. That’s the key to the idea of cloud technology.”

And on the rumours that Microsoft is eyeing up an OnLive acquisition? “If that was to happen – and that’s pure speculation – that’s really up to the company involved.”

10 comments

#1

Razor
31/07/12, 5:45 pm

They just jelly.

#2

xino
31/07/12, 6:05 pm

why? because Sony would win?:)

#3

Erthazus
31/07/12, 6:07 pm

Butt hurts much?

#4

TD_Monstrous69
31/07/12, 6:34 pm

It’s kinda funny that he’s bashing a move before Sony’s even really detailed what exectly it is they’re gonna do with Gaikai.

#5

Bloodyghost
31/07/12, 6:47 pm

Translated:

“Why weren’t we picked up by Sony! Microsoft better get us now!”

#6

Dragon246
31/07/12, 7:36 pm

‘Sony buying Gaikai misses the point of cloud gaming’
or in other words,
‘Sony buying Onlive would hit the point of cloud gaming’

#7

NocturnalB
31/07/12, 10:58 pm

As the worlds tinniest violin begins to play.

#8

TheWulf
01/08/12, 5:50 am

Sigh.

No, OnLive are actually right in this case. Buying a streaming service and locking it to one platform is ridiculous. It’s actually depriving them of competition, even, so if they were thinking of themselves they’d be supporting this. It’s actually refreshing for a company to be honest.

If you look at OnLive, it’s available for almost every platform imaginable, with more becoming available all the time. That’s how it should be. The point of streaming, if you have any education in the matter, is to provide games to people who don’t have systems that could necessarily run them.

So Gaikai only running on Playstation platforms, which can already play games, is just… to what end?

For Sony, that was a waste of money. For Gaikai, it was a waste of potential. For OnLive, it was the waste of potential competition.

#9

Hirmetrium
01/08/12, 9:02 am

Wulf, have you actually just said that?

Anybody who has any knowledge of what Sony actually do and how big they are will know this reaches FAR beyond “Playstation”. In theory, any hardware Sony now makes could have Gaikai software on it and enable stream based gaming.

That includes TV’s, players, etc.

Honestly, Sony could quite easily install it on everything and it would be amazing.

#10

DrDamn
01/08/12, 9:29 am

@8
I agree with some of your points, but there are clearly lots of reasons why this might be a good and beneficial thing for Sony. We don’t even know the plans yet.

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