SONY

Cloud, handheld, mobile…Sony finally sees the future of PlayStation not only in the console

Like it or not, the holy grail of gaming industry expansion isn’t in consoles. Google knew it too, but its boss Sundar Pichai was not penitent enough, he didn’t get through the test of patience, and Stadia’s severed head is now lying on the ground between the heads Google Reader a Google+.

Not only the technological giants have been aware for some time that the future of gaming is not strictly in local powerful hardware, after all, even Amazon has its own Luna. But even Microsoft knows it, even if xCloud is not yet a mass-spread service, it is here, it works and it continues boldly expands.

Rumors about the new technologies eventually reached Sony and they are starting to act there. Late but still. Sure, Sony has been flirting with game streaming for a decade, and even runs its own cloud gaming service. But it practically doesn’t promote it, and if you asked a regular and maybe even a few avid gamers if they know what the service is called, where to find it and what its advantages are, I’d bet they’d be more hesitant than Hamlet.

Cloud...It’s only been a few days since they surfaced information about recruiting dozens of people for relatively senior positions with one common denominator: cloud gaming. At Sony, they are looking for people who are supposed to start it from the ground up, including the person who will create and implement a strategic vision for cloud game streaming and lead the “cloud gaming revolution”.

This may not look interesting at first glance, but it is absolutely essential for Sony. The manufacturer of PlayStation is here more than Microsoft with its first party games. All of Sony’s efforts so far have been chaotic, to put it mildly, and without a clear vision.

Fast-forward: In 2012, Sony buys Gaikai, the following year it presents the PlayStation 4 and Gaikai, respectively a considerable part of the presentation is devoted to cloud services. But in the end nothing came of it. In 2015, Sony “buys” Gaikai’s former competitor, the streaming service OnLive, but the road does not lead there either – the service ends and Sony acquires patents. This is followed by the launch of its own PlayStation Now streaming service, but also in its previous form does not exist.

Currently, streaming is only part of the most expensive PlayStation Plus subscription. But the selection of compatible games is debatable and certainly does not automatically include all the latest gems. A new person who should give a clear vision to the cloud gaming strategy at Sony is needed like salt.

Sony also admits in the ads that it is working on a usage-based hybrid cloud infrastructure Kubernetes a AWS. Which is interesting and maybe even slightly spicy, because you just have to rewind time to 2019, when representatives of Sony and Microsoft shook their hands over a new unique partnership based primarily on the use of Azure. Microsoft’s worldwide cloud infrastructure was supposed to power “something” from Sony, but that didn’t happen either.

The next piece to the cloud puzzle are patents related to cloud gaming, as he reports The Verge. Sony has quite a few of these relatively recently, and some of them are signed by the main architect of PS4 and PS5 himself, Mark Cerny.

So Sony does not underestimate preparations for the future. Despite her long-standing efforts to penetrate the clouds, she started the new vision late, but better late than late. The company obviously realizes that its current cloud strategy is impassable in the future. That next time on the market, having only and only PlayStation 6 for a lot of money and then hiding a not very attractive streaming service in the most expensive of your subscription plans, might not be enough.

Handheld...How does the alleged streaming handheld fit into this? Well, whatever. You may have noticed a few days ago that Sony is said to be working on a Q Lite device, which should be, at least according to Tom Henderson’s unnamed sources at Insider Gaming, primarily streaming. However, the streaming device is not for cloud gaming, but for the PlayStation 5. So, in the end, not so much “streaming” as standing on the old familiar Remote Play.

This, in my opinion, is, with apologies, stupid. It doesn’t make much sense to have a device that can only do Remote Play. However, to have a handheld that can handle both Remote Play and full-fledged streaming of games from the cloud, and will be able to do everything that the PS5 can do except for native game play (i.e. all management of everything from the game library to friends to various settings), makes sense to me now.

I personally believe that the PS Vita will not be repeated. That we will never again get a separate powerful handheld from Sony, on which their first party studios will make exclusive big games. Development is too expensive for that, individual studio time even more scarce, the pressure for game success enormous, and to cram so many precious and severely limited resources into handheld games “only” when you have your own powerful console in the market? I do not think.

After all, even Nintendo, the pioneer and titan of “mobile” gaming, has cut its own handhelds, which has been focusing only on the hybrid Switch for some time now. Although a nice Steam Deck recently appeared on the market, you don’t know how many people bought it, and the secretive Valve keeps its mouth shut.

Q Lite (or whatever the device will eventually be called) will most likely be real. Most likely, however, it will not replace anything, exclusive big games will not be released on it, and it will only be a nice addition for PlayStation 5 owners. For others, it can be a kind of cheap gateway to the world of PlayStation through cloud gaming.

Cell phones...In the same way, Sony does not forget about mobile phones and tablets, on which they would like to have around twenty percent of new games within two years. And even here they are establishing a new division and looking for new people who will cover the mobile initiative and push forward not only their own titles, but above all partnerships with already established mobile creators.

And who knows, maybe the next big multiplayer event from Bungie will be truly multi-platform and will be released on both PC and mobile in addition to PlayStation. After all, there she could recruit many times more players than she can ever do on the PlayStation 5.

Together with other developers, spin-offs of big brands, new free-to-play games can be created for mobiles, and when Sony completes its new version of game streaming, it will certainly be available on mobile devices as well.

The inevitable future...Whatever they do at Sony, one thing is certain: they can’t avoid the Cloud, other platforms and general portfolio diversification. Going forward, this would be a huge mistake that would definitely cement Sony in an inflexible, too old-fashioned position. Which might pass this time, but what about next time?

Eventually, everything will happen anyway. Sony will have a powerful console, a streaming handheld that supports Remote Play, a cloud service, among other things, integrated into its televisions and games wherever it makes a little bit of sense.

At the same time, none of this will be significantly dominant, or at least in the beginning it will not be at the expense of the classic console. I’d bet that even during the next generation of consoles, the PlayStation 6 will still be the center of Sony’s gaming universe. He just won’t be the only one anymore. Adding hardware and services will mean a chance for Sony to add customers.

Reaching out to people who wouldn’t buy the expensive and oh-so-affordable PlayStation 6 right now for some reason will be key next time. Starting to stream the latest titles on a cheaper handheld or your own underpowered laptop and eventually switching to a PlayStation 6 Slim at a more favorable price may already make more sense to some holiday gamer hungry for the next Horizon than buying an expensive console in the first months of its life.

This scenario made up of fingers, patents, recruitments and other clues would fill Sony’s hole in the entry category, or how to get the PlayStation as cheaply as possible. Microsoft has a streaming service available in the browser, and when you need their console, you can buy a cheap Xbox Series S, which, combined with Game Pass, is a famously affordable entry point into the gaming world.

It works in a similar way with Apple, for example: You can buy an older, but still solid iPhone, then use it to get AirPods, then perhaps an iPad, and before you know it, you have a MacBook and you’re definitely hooked. Sony, despite the cheaper PS5 without a drive, does not yet have such an accessible entry point. A great entry-level device could be a cheap streaming handheld, or a great multiplayer free-to-play action from the creators of Destiny, also available on PC.

At any cost...Why would Sony even do something like this? Well, because so far, even with the successful PlayStation 5, it doesn’t look significantly different than it was before. The most successful consoles always sell around a hundred million units, plus or minus a few tens of millions at most. And the PS5 will most likely be no different. No such console will sell 400 million units at the end of its active life cycle.

So how to extract money from even more players and get some of them on your side? Precisely through attractive services, other devices, other platforms and other media. That is, through streaming, a possible handheld, mobile games, and last but not least, Sony’s film branch will also lend a hand to the work, in combination with licensing series to other entities.

At Sony, they finally understood that this moving train must not be missed at any cost. After all, they are also expanding their scope by porting some of their games to PC. The previously unthinkable move is now almost standard, and even if no PC gamer buys a PlayStation 5 thanks to the nicer ports of Horizon, God of War or even The Last of Us: Part I, at least Sony has some money from them.

The costs of developing big games, contrary to the expectations that accompany them, are not exactly falling. And it is precisely on the biggest and most polished first party games that the attractiveness of the PS5 is largely based.

Microsoft has a significant technological and infrastructural lead and through the cheaper version of the console, Game Pass, xCloud, mobile games (meh) and to some extent Windows has the potential to reach a much wider group of potential customers. But as much as Microsoft commands a formidable technological army, Sony has, in the form of its premium game series, the Hulk. For now, he’s still on a hardware leash, but it’s only a matter of time before he’s released.

Author: Adam Homola