OXMUK

More news from OtherBox Land this morning this morning, where water continues to be poured on the conjectured industry-crushing implications of Sony's purchase of game-streaming service Gaikai.

Eurogamer's published a lengthy, interesting report which includes comments from Andy Payne, Mastertronic headman and UKIE chairman, and Screen Digest senior analyst Piers Harding-Rolls. Both reinforce Michael Pachter's suggestion yesterday that Microsoft doesn't need to "respond" to Sony's move e.g. by acquiring rival streaming service OnLive. Or rather, they argue that Sony may, in fact, be responding to moves already made by Microsoft.

"Microsoft has already got its ball," said Payne, discussing cloud gaming at large. "They've bashed that ball around quite a fair bit, don't worry about that. They've already got their strategy well in place.

"If anything, Sony has been playing catch up. It's just that Microsoft hasn't told everybody necessarily what they're doing with their streaming service.

"Very simply, Microsoft is a technology company. This is about technology. They will have their balls nicely in a row, without any shadow of a doubt, on their offering through Xbox. They know that. It will only be a matter of time, won't it? It's an arms race.

"They will have a streaming component to Xbox ASAP. One would know that it will definitely be, I'm sure, announced very soon. One has to hope that Nintendo have got something up their sleeve."

"They're pretty strongly positioned," added Harding-Rolls. "They have the expertise, they have a huge resource of software technology staff to actually build these types of solutions." But even if they felt they needed outside systems, there are a number of number of streaming solutions out there."

"Microsoft is building its own, massive cloud infrastructure to provide services to its clients, so already it's building its capability in terms of managing other types of content.

"I don't think it would want to acquire something like OnLive that has gone out and tried to build its own network, and try and assimilate that into its existing cloud infrastructure. It would be more a case of it building out its own infrastructure rather than acquiring someone like OnLive."

We're keeping pace with the discussion. Your thoughts? Would you buy into an Xbox game streaming service, or do discs, boxes and dedicated living room hardware have a lasting charm?

http://www.oxm.co.uk/43372/sony-is-playing-catch-up-to-microsoft-with-gaikai-acquisition-ukie-chairman/

All I got from that is Microsoft bash their row of balls.

Seriously though, there are areas where each company is catching up to each other. On the first party front it's Microsoft catching up to Sony, online Multiplayer it's Sony catching up to Microsoft, they're tied in most places like Third party support and miscellaneous services like Netflix, iplayer etc. About streaming, I know PS3 has had cloud functions on PS+ for a while now, and now they've got Gaikai, does Xbox 360 use the cloud yet?

Ms has had cloud saves for awhile now.

Lol, those mean mean analysts :p

More room on shelves for Nintendo. Great.

lol so many MS balls

and no they are still building while now sony already have a solid infrastructure and it's mainly aimed at gaming. MS have yet to show anything of the like. This is PR nonsense as usual.

And to the guy who said about cloud saves, sony have it too you know. iirc they brought it first to ps3, before ms did for xbox

MUGE -> They're ballin' with Ballmer. :B

LOLOLOLOL well he is ballin hard :D

If my English understanding is right, then 'catching up' means one already have done something and the other is following him in the same path to 'catch him'. Sony now owns Gaikai, what does Microsoft have? Who is playing catch up in reality?

MS allready has the infrastructure. They just didnt reveal anything to us. Time isnt right yet. 

Sony had to blow 380 million just to be on the same level as MS. Thing is Sony shouldnt be spending right now either.