Have to say, Sony has been really good at keeping people off their guard and unsure as of late. Not sure that is working out for them very well, but at least they're managing to keep a little bit of mystery around this.

However, I still believe that they would not be foolish enough to lapse straight into streamed gaming. There's going to be a PS4 because nobody is stupid enough to leap into the streamed game world and to ignore the use of physical discs and content providers like Steam and PSN where you can actually own a digital copy of the game. Digital gaming is STILL behind physical media, even though its growing quickly, but the concept of streaming gaming is more controversial. Never own another game, never have the ability to use mods (because it's all on their end), never be without your monthly fee for being able to play said games...to say that it isn't a pleasant idea to many gamers would be an understatement.

Though this isn't even about the gamers. It's about shareholders. How many of the people putting money into the company are going to continue to do so when lots of them don't even believe Kaz NOW when he says that the belt will be tightened and hard decisions will be made? "We're going to change to a gaming system that is still in its relatively early stages and won't let our customers actually buy or own their games, but we've got a really good idea that this might be where gaming is going! Maybe!" Try and pitch that to people who you're trying to get money out of.

With nvidia's new GRID tech they have shown they can reduce input/output lag to lower than that experienced when playing a 30fps game on a console. I.e. they can lower it to more than acceptable levels for the average console gamer. 

If so... It will be possible cross game chat on the PS3 with cloud game?

Unfortunately that isn't the only issue. For people who don't have unlimited bandwidth streaming games probably isn't going to be reasonable anytime soon. 

Latency is a massive issue though. I just did a test on the Gaikai site where I am now. Looking at speedtest the connection is 50% faster than the global average. And is faster than 50% of users in the U.K. (which I guess makes it's pretty much smack bang in the middle average here?) . Although I suspect your average speedtest user has a faster connection than normal. Despite this input lag was still very noticable on a sinlgeplayer only game. Tested with Rayman origins and Bulletstorm as I know how they should feel. Rayman was playable but felt bad. Bulletstorm was incredibly difficult to play and felt atrocious. 

Cloud gaming is definitely the future but I still think it has too many disadvantages in the coming years. I think we will easily get another generation in before it's competitive.

While I expect Sony to create an actual box, this fits in perfectly with my thread from yesterday. They'll just move all their Playstation stuff into their existing boxes like blurays (w/ GoogleTV), TVs (w/ GoogleTV), etc.

Actually, if they do put out a box, it would explain why the rumors for the PS4 are so relatively low as compared to what many thought they may be. Interesting.

It is a bright move on Sony's part. Programming Cloud applications and watching the business grow has really increased profits. This could be Sony's player maker to bring them to life. I would like to see them team up with Leap camera to improve Sony eye to make the system easier to use as a home entertainment system.

I wonder if all these companies which are moving to using the cloud have also considered the ISP usage limits that many companies (at least here in the United States) have.

I have Comcast and it has a 250 GB per month limit. That sounds like a lot -- and it is. But what does it really mean. Will you exhaust it if you are playing 8 hours a day, several days a week, as well as streaming movies, visiting webpages, updating Facebook, Tweeting, handling the occasional email, etc.

And from what I can tell, this is a very generous cap.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/04/how-internet-users-are-disciplined-around-the-world/


Mike from Morgantown

We've discussed this before and I've never been in a place with any form of a cap. Home internet is unlimited as far as I know. You need to move or find a new service.

I hate the idea, but I understand it. Sony is in pretty bad shape financially, so it could be too much risk to release another console now, besides cloud gaming on PS3 could see a major graphics improvement since you could theoretically (with a nice internet connection) play games at native 1080p since the console wouldn't use any of its resources on rendering. My hopes is that this is an expansion of this generation to stay competitive against Wii U and next box, and that we'll see an actual PS4 someday (around 2015) which will be a major improvement over Wii U and Xbox 720.

I have no issue whatsoever streaming Netflix HD at home so lag and bandwith are not an issue. If true, I am very interested about the pricing.