Apparently some 70$ a month (Canada), including our local phone line. I think it's a student rate.

wow, is that Sony's way of bowing out of the console industry?

I always thought that if one of the Big3 had to leave the console business it would be Sony. But seriously I never thought the odds were that much in favor of happening... With Sony's financial status, with the PS3's terrible launch, the complete failure that was the PsPGo and the huge struggles of the Vita, I would'nt be surprised that sony is dreading the launch of a new system.

If this is true and that they rly make PS games availabe on android/iOS, it almost confirms that they are giving up on the vita and that they have no plan in making a PS4. Honestly, even before that announcement, I was already extremely hard for me to imagine Sony revealing the PS4 at E3 2013 for a holiday 2013 launch... Even a 2014 launch was hard for me to imagine, but for M$ on the other hand...

That's one way to see it. The other is, assuming this applies also to their next gen proposition, which is unlikely, is that they are side-stepping the manufacturing of HW and offering the equivalent platform free of distribution costs and free of production costs (which they were mostly selling at a loss in their current bleeding-edge strategy).

But historically, given the history of ties, it's a valid way to see it I guess, since selling a console at a loss is not a normal approach.

This is not as crazy a move as it seems; Sony isn't Nintendo, which needs fist party exclusive to move hardware, so they afford to farm out their exclusives to other platforms if it means more revenue. (Which is more important for them right now than sales)

Perhaps "PS4" will in fact be a cloud gaming service?

That will screw A LOT of people, they will never do that, it will probably have both options, some games will be with cloud streaming and others will be normal physical copies.

Just because there are exclusive games shown in the pictures doesn't mean that those games will be available to play on phone, tablets, and pc's. That would be really stupid of sony, IMO, because if there is a ps4 coming then they need to have their exclusives only available on their console and there would be no reason to even keep producing ps3's because no one would really need one then as long as you have good enough internet speeds and a computer.

I think some of you are jumping to conclusions that aren't there. Yes there will be a ps4, and no you wont be able to play full games on your xbox on pc. What you will be able to do is try them out and be told to buy a psvita/3/4 to play it. It's the ultimate advertising tool. Sony isn't stepping out of hardware, they've had far to much success. Plus this confirms BC with PS4, Imagine just sticking your ps3 disk in. Gaikai checks it and then streams. This could also bring all PC games to your vita and PS3/4. There wont be much of a reason to buy the other console when ps offers so much.

Noone on Windows Android or IOS are going to download and pay a monthly fee for a service that is gimped. This is a paid service to play games via streaming. This is not just some cool app.

There is absolutely no point in a custmoer paying for a streaming service that you get half of whats available on the same service via Vita or PS3.

Please can people tink a little about this. Its like Steam being available on Android and only offering older games and some demos but still charging the customer for using the service.

The last thing Sony wants is this to fail. Its important especially for the future that Sony has a unified platform accross devices otherwise people will choose other options which are unified.

You may think it hurts tem now, but if they get tis wrong it will hurt them much more in the future as this service will only be more important in the future whereas hardware wont.

Can it play the latest Nintendo games? ;)

Before putting too much weight on Cloud gaming, I'd suggest taking a look at what is happening with OnLive.