Although Google Stadia has been a failure in the eyes of Google, it seems that the ecosystem itself will be a sector that game providers will fight for in the coming years. Microsoft has xcloud and Sony PlayStation Now, about which Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has expressed a lot of interest in its growth and future hardware.
At least on PS5, Yoshida acknowledged it as “an amazing business model" in an interview with the Financial Times. They are also very aware of the obstacles posed by a relatively young technology.
PlayStation Now has to improve, and Sony knows it
Yoshida acknowledged that latency is the main difficulty to overcome. They believe that "the cloud itself is an amazing business model, but when it comes to gaming, the technical difficulties are high«They know there will be challenges for cloud gaming, but they want to take them on.
Sony launched cloud gaming early on with PlayStation Now, a paid service that allowed gamers to stream games to their console without downloading. In its early days it was not the most reliable service at the time, with frequent disconnections and high lag, which was a problem even with moderately fast Internet speeds. But times have changed and speeds are up, as are protocols, and it is easier to sell a subscription or a digital service than to wait for them to buy you a hard-to-find console or have a mid-high range PC.
For years, PlayStation Now has been integrated into PS Plus, and game streaming is an optional alternative to downloads. But PS3 games on the service only have cloud streaming as the only option available. Also, there is a lot of difference between the performance of a game in the cloud than in native local on a PS5.
Until now, only Xbox Cloud Gaming has been able to present a competent game streaming solution in the realm of consoles. But since it's only available as part of an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, the cost of entry is quite steep. Sony may want to look for a more affordable solution if you are interested in increasing the appeal of cloud gaming. The Prioject Q announcement a few weeks ago hinted that they wanted to focus on that, but that's a controller that connects via Wi-Fi to the console, not the servers themselves for cloud gaming.
Source: TechRadar
