Sony and Microsoft’s collaboration on cloud gaming and streaming services was the most shocking news of recent days not only in the gaming industry, but also the whole category of technology news. The long-running rivalry between the two direct competitors ends at least in this particular section, because they currently have a bigger enemy to deal with and as you guess that’s Google.
During Sony’s Investors Relations Day 2019, Kenchiro Yoshida, CEO at Japanese giant, has answered to some questions about the partnering with Microsoft, explaining what caused Sony to think about a long-term collaboration with the Redmond team and what is the goal for this partnership to achieve in the next generation of consoles. Starting from talking about the main challenges in cloud gaming Yoshida said:
On our collaboration with Microsoft and the likely size of it we have in mind, at this point in time in order to have a broader and deeper discussion we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding. Over the long term, the cloud and streaming services trend will mature, but it is very difficult to ascertain the timeline.
We’ve been working with streaming services over the last five years and there are various difficult aspects. The network latency, for one. Some examples I could cite, for instance, the typical means of minimizing latency is the placement of servers on the edge closer to users, but moving servers closer to one group of users can mean increasing latency for another group of users. And also, there will be an encoding process at the very end, and how we can minimize the time for compression is another challenge. And also, in order to make it a viable business, what would be the business model? Our service is a subscription model now, but depending on the game, one could be played for fifty or a hundred hours and for someone playing one game like this, what is the advantage of a subscription service per month, the all-you-can-play type of model? So in terms of technology and services, there are various aspects we would like to look into with Microsoft going forward, especially in terms of streaming solutions. We would like to proceed through collaboration. On our side, Toru Katsumoto (EVP in charge of R&D) will be leading the initiative and continue to carry out discussions.
Completing his words above, Yoshida also revealed Sony’s vision on cloud gaming and streaming services with an especial look to expand Remote Play and PlayStation Now in the future, while progressing the main line of goals in console gaming and content creating. Yoshida added:
As we speak, we provide, as I said, the immersive business and experience is something we would like to continue to place importance on. If you look at the game industry as a whole, the console market is not a major market, rather it’s a niche market if you will. But for core gamers, immersive experiences are something we would like to value. In this respect, for the time being, the console as something that brings about computing functionality to the users is very important, but on the other hand, technology will progress and so as I said today, the Remote Play and PlayStation Now, the streaming services will be worked on in parallel, that is what we are doing at this moment.
While we haven’t seen any sight of the result for this partnership between the two giants, it would surely make a safe bridge for both Sony and Microsoft to have more in common with each other’s platforms in the following generation of consoles.
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