Already struggling under a mountain of losses, Sony has moved to acquire Gaikai a videogame streaming Company for a reported price of $380 million.The move by Sony to stream content has raised questions about the future of the Company’s Blu-ray disc technology with some insiders now tipping the new PlayStation 4 could come with no DVD player.
The move to streaming content bodes well for the NBN fibre broadband initiative in Australia with several analysts claiming that playing games online hasn’t taken off because of slow broadband speeds resulting in a game taking hours to download. There is also lags in transmission speeds.
The Wall Street Journal said that Gaikai has been at the forefront of the online-games industry, providing technology services for publishers so their games can be played online.
“It’s recognition on Sony’s part that the cloud and cloud streaming technologies are going to have profound and possibly a very positive impact on not only our game business, but also in the way our consumers interact with and obtain content in general,” Andrew House, the head of Sony’s videogame business, said Monday.
The Gaikai acquisition could have an impact across the entire range of Sony’s business. Sony’s long-standing strategy has been to try to use its entertainment offerings to improve the appeal of its hardware products. But that strategy hasn’t paid off fully because Sony’s movies and music are also available on competitors’ products.
In contrast, Sony’s videogame content is mostly limited to the company’s own dedicated game consoles. Gaikai’s platform offers Sony a possible way to use its videogame business to enhance its other electronics offerings, such as tablet computers, mobile phones or Internet-connected television sets.
