Analysis: Is Sony buying time - or problems?

[osed125]

CChaos said:

osed125 said:

imo the purchase of Gaikai was a dumb move by Sony, sure cloud gaming could become a big thing in North America and Europe, but what about the rest of the world? Contrary to popular believe the internet it's not fast enough in most places to have an optimal cloud gaming experience. Sony could potentially screw over all of their consumers outside North America and Europe. Of course all I said could become true if they decided to go all out on cloud gaming, if you can still buy fisical copies of games then it's not really a big problem.

Actually, there IS one manner in which Gaikai could become quite invaluable to them. See, Gaikai and OnLive alike were both based out of California (Aliso Viejo and San Francisco, respectively), but the States is actually behind twelve other countries for internet speeds. Couple it with the fact that you still have a tonne of areas that don't have very good internet and it seems like a pipe dream.

However, if they were to take the technology and start using it in South Korea and Japan (the fastest and second fastest average internet speeds in the world), both of which are fairly game heavy cultures, they could make an absolute mint off of the infrastructure already in place. Especially if they make it viable for use with the PSP, Vita and smartphones.

But two countries alone will not make them profit in the long run. If they go all out with cloud gaming it has to be for everyone, not just a couple of countries.