Sony’s CEO has warned that cloud gaming is still technically “very tricky,” downplaying the possibility of the industry fast migrating to a technology on which rival Microsoft has staked substantially.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Kenichiro Yoshida stated that the PlayStation creator would continue to investigate “various options” for streaming games over the internet in the future, adding that it may use GT Sophy, its artificial intelligence agent, to boost cloud gaming.
“I think cloud itself is an amazing business model, but when it comes to games, the technical difficulties are high,” Yoshida remarked, citing latency — the quick response times expected by gamers — as the main obstacle.
“So there will be challenges to cloud gaming, but we want to take on those challenges.”
Despite several attempts to reshape the gaming industry around the cloud, many customers are still reluctant to convert from a console or high-end gaming PC to streaming games wholly over the internet, fearing latencies caused by declining internet connectivity and server performance.
After more than a decade of research, the promise of cloud gaming remains unmet.
Sony was one of the first large corporations to enter the sector, purchasing cloud gaming company Gaikai for $380 million in 2012 and later OnLive’s technologies.