Gaikai deal 'a strategic move to sell more Sony TVs,' says Pachter

Microsoft doesn't necessarily need to respond to Sony's $380m acquisition of Gaikai, analyst Michael Pachter has said

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/356267/gaikai-deal-a-strategic-move-to-sell-more-sony-tvs-says-pachter/

sry fucked it up when i posted it hope it is readable now^^

Still wonder how the recent Samsung deal affects the TV part of it all.

So, what are the system specs for gakai and is it a piece of HW or just a service for PCs?

There are no system specs required - that's the whole point! It just streams video to your device over the internet, like a Netflix movie. It can be used on pretty much any device with an internet connection, although Sony will probably limit it to themselves and maybe certain manufacturers.

Thanks Sal. So, is it able to stream 1080 HD, is there any lag or is this a fully proven concept?

There'd be little threat of Nintendo ever considering anything resembling buying Gaikai, while Microsoft largely would have the infrastructure to do it themselves.

That's the golden ticket - acceptable levels of lag combined with good quality video. 

I didn't really check this stuff out until recently when rumours started popping up, but in this Gaikai vs OnLive comparison (OnLive is the other big streaming service)  they sum it up quite nicely. 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-face-off-gaikai-vs-onlive

"In short, it's still early days for the cloud - both OnLive and Gaikai are still what we would term "first gen" products of this new generation in gaming and are far from mature technologies - but it is clear that there is genuine promise here. Steve Perlman's group takes honours for frame-rate, while David Perry's team command clear advantages in game spec, video encoding and overall latency. The signs are there that this can work: Bulletstorm on Gaikai running with the same latency as the Xbox 360 game - however inconsistent it may be - is as clear an indicator as any that cloud could evolve into a viable contender. The technology here is achieving miracles as is, and with advances in infrastructure and improved engineering, it's only going to get better."

And from this article that I read today, here's the real magic info (the whole article is great though):

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-in-theory-sony-gaikai 

"NVIDIA's take on cloud and how GeForce GRID with Gaikai represents a second-gen technology with vastly improved latency. "

So basically, right now, they can get streaming games running at acceptable latency to the average console gamer (i.e. a bit better than 30fps console games which are the standard today). And it will only improve from there!

Thanks!! I asked the right guy. My feel is that this will enable PS3 gaming to be as good streamed as off a PS3. I'd be surprised if machines will be powerful enough to get the same "Game Pipeline" efficiency for next gen graphics.

A little misleading for some, but the more educated will know better. In other words, I expect this to be used mostly for PS3/Vita and below software in Sony's next-gen strat. It won't be viable for PS4, what is your opinion Sal?

Oh god if that is true I won't be able to play any game properly, my internet sucks!