Gaikai to launch across North America in Q3 2014 - report
Gaikai has been a bit quiet recently, but one site has reported a Q3 2014 launch for the cloud streaming service in North America. If sources are to be believed, Europe will have to wait even longer.
It comes from Eurogamer, which claims Gaikai will hit PS4 in Q3 2014. The site says it's heard the full service won't hit Europe until 2015.
The site asked Sony's Andrew House to comment on the state of Gaikai's roll-out plans. He replied, "We're on track to have a commercial service up and running in the US first within 2014. That remains the plan and we're very much on track to reach that. But what's important is to understand the full scope of what we're trying to achieve and why we felt the Gaikai acquisition was important.
"Our goal is to be able to have a new form of game distribution streamed from the server side, initially to PS4 consoles then gradually moving that out to Vita. But eventually, the endgame is to have this available on a multitude of network-connected devices, essentially delivering a console-quality gaming experience on devices which are not innately capable of doing that.
"We think there's a great opportunity to broaden the market, because you essentially remove the need to make the console purchase in order to have access to that experience. It may sound counter-intuitive, because, aren't you replacing a business that is your bread and butter? But part of being an innovative company is being a pioneer in new forms of distribution of content, and we would like to be there first and take a leadership role."
On the reported 2015 launch in Europe, House added, "I really can't be specific on the European roll-out. It's a brand new form of delivery. We need to prove out the technology, which we feel is good at its core, but we place - as I think is quite right - a real emphasis on delivering a quality experience for consumers. And that will be dependent to a degree on what the strength of broadband connection is going to be, and what our server deployment and infrastructure looks like.
"We're hard at work on all of those fronts, but I'm not at a point right now where I can be specific about when our European fans are going to be able to enjoy that."
Sony acquired Dave Perry's Gaikai service for $380 million back in July, 2012.
What do you make of the above?
Via CVG.