The company will reportedly announce a deal with OnLive or Gaikai at E3.
By Chris Pereira, 05/24/2012



At this year's E3 Nintendo will be talking Wii U, Microsoft may be focused on things of little interest to core gamers, and Sony will reportedly be talking cloud gaming. VG247 reports Sony will announce the details of a could gaming deal it has secured during its E3 press conference next month. There were no details made available, including whom the deal is with -- it's said to be either Gaikai or OnLive.

That detail makes a significant difference. While they are both streaming game companies, there is a fundamental difference in how each operates. Gaikai mainly brings game trials/demos to browsers, making them playable directly on retailer websites, Facebook, and so on. OnLive allows gamers to sample titles, but it is mainly focused on selling them through apps on computers and other devices, like tablets, in addition to its OnLive Game System (designed to bring the service to TVs). OnLive games can be purchased and played in their entirety, which is the major distinction between them and the more try-before-you-buy nature of Gaikai.

There are a number of ways either service could be integrated into the PlayStation Network, both on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. The most basic idea would be to release an app on either platform for whichever of the two services the deal is with. OnLive makes more sense for this approach. Gamers could sample or purchase games through the app, or access games the PlayPack Bundle allows to be played for a flat monthly fee of $9.99. This would be beneficial to OnLive because it would expose more gamers to its offerings; there is likely a demographic interested in using it on their TV but not in buying another box to make doing so possible. And Sony gets another feature to tout its free service has that Xbox Live does not.

What Sony could also do is make access to OnLive -- perhaps the PlayPack games -- part of PlayStation Plus. The optional subscription service does offer a lot of value at times (this month subscribers get free copies of Awesomenauts, Trine 2, and Rock of Ages for as long as their subscription is active, among other things). Adding in access to streaming games, even if they are older titles like Borderlands and Batman: Arkham Asylum, would be another compelling bullet point for Plus.

Sony likes to promote cross-platform play and games which can be played on both PS3 and Vita. Streaming games, being platform-independent, would be playable on both platforms and seem to fit right in with that line of Sony's thinking. Even ignoring this point, it makes sense that Sony would be the first of the game platform manufacturers to support streaming games; Nintendo has been slow to move into the online space, Microsoft likes to keep things closed and under its control on Xbox Live, and Sony, meanwhile, has allowed Steam onto PSN, so why not OnLive or Gaikai?

Whichever of those two the deal is with, a central component will presumably be the availability of streaming demos. Rather than downloading a demo from the notoriously slow PlayStation Store, imagine browsing to a page on the Store for a game you're interested in and being able to immediately play a demo without having to download anything. This seems to be a better fit for Gaikai than OnLive, although the latter does allow users to sample the first 30 minutes of a game without paying, so it could work either way. Such immediate availablility of demos could improve sales of games on PSN, the appeal of which for Sony and third parties is obvious.

Vita in particular could benefit from streaming games and game demos. With the system lacking any internal storage and its proprietary memory cards being pricey, the ability to play a game or demo without needing to clear out space or buy a new card would be appreciated.

The benefits of either service will be limited to some extent; only those with stable Internet connections would be able to take advantage of Gaikai or OnLive. The latter requires a 2 Mbps connection, with 5 Mbps being the recommended speed. For many people that's not asking too much in 2012, although there are sure to be those who have slower connections or unstable wireless ones, either of which would render this functionality moot. So long as the deal is relatively limited and optional in scope -- and it will be; it's not as if the PlayStation 4 or PS3/Vita demos are going to be announced on June 4 as streaming-only -- this should still be a nice perk for those with an Internet connection capable of taking advantage of it.