Sony Buys Cloud Gaming company Gaikai for $380m

Sony today confirmed that they have bought Gaikai for $380m. What is surprising is that the move to buy Gaikai was not announced at E3 which if anything would have made Sony’s conference one of the most interesting conferences of a somewhat dull E3 for the Platform holders.

Formed in 2008 by industry veteran Dave Perry, Gaikai is a cloud-based game service which allows users to play high-end PC titles by streaming the content via a broadband connection.

Gaikai is much like OnLive as it allows gamers to stream games to their computer. Meaning that the games are played on a high end pc and then streamed to you with the actions you chose being implemented.

If you head to the Gaikai website you can actually try the service for free with some of the demos provided by Ubisoft and EA. Among them are some pretty big title like Mass Effect 3 and Crysis 2.

What does this move mean for the PS4 then? Well at the moment it is far too early to tell what Sony will actually do for it. It could be the PS4′s main way of delivery for games or just a back-up plan in case the PS4 doesn’t do so well. I will however, say that it’s a very large amount of money for just a back-up plan and with the current console sales models starting to decline it makes a lot of sense for Sony to do this. They’ve been facing some real troubles with financial decisions the past year. Whether or not it will work for them is another question altogether.

“By combining Gaikai’s resources including its technological strength and engineering talent with SCE’s extensive game platform knowledge and experience, SCE will provide users with unparalleled cloud entertainment experiences.

“SCE will deliver a world-class cloud-streaming service that allows users to instantly enjoy a broad array of content ranging from immersive core games with rich graphics to casual content anytime, anywhere on a variety of internet-connected devices.”

Sounds like they’re really trying to sell Gaikai to me.