12 years ago today, Sony bought Gaikai for $380 Million, Do you think it was worth it?

[RE4-Station]

The summer of 2012, The summer of Lollipop Chainsaw and Sony expanding in Video Game Streaming, Funny how the Summer of 2024 seems to be a repeat of these things (well almost, Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is September.)

July 2nd, 2012 was the day Sony bought Gaikai for $380 Million US Dollars and would later be used for PSN Now which launched in January 2014!

Sony buys cloud gaming company Gaikai for $380m

PlayStation console set to get a streaming games service courtesy of $380m acquisition. By Keith Stuart

www.theguardian.com

Finally in June of 2022 PS Now would be intergraded to a bonus in the premium tier of PS Plus and drop the PS Now branding!

with the amount of money spend on making custom PS3 server racks, The apps lasting for only a short time on PS Vita and Bravia TV's Do you think it was a smart investment by Sony during those times when they were struggling financially?
Also don't for get PS now was meant to bring BC to PS4 for PS1, PS2, and PS3 games originally but PS1 and PS2 would eventually get native download support for those systems!

 

[JAHGamer]

Hell no, not even 1% of PSN users ever touch cloud and maybe like 12 PC gamers used it to play PS4 games through the cloud. Imagine if all that money was spent on proper backwards compatibility development

 

[mibu no ookami]

Sony was late to the game when it came to motion controls despite being an early pioneer with Eye Toy.

The result was the Wii selling 101 million units and giving Nintendo new found life after the failure of the Gamecube. The Wii while followed up by the Wii U, eventually lead to the Switch, giving Nintendo significant revenue and profits.

Microsoft bought Bungie and Halo for 20-40 million dollars. Had Sony bought them, they could have staved off the entire Xbox experience, which could have delivered them tens of billions of dollars as a result.

Sony paid a premium to be early on streaming, and we're still not really there today, but Sony is decently positioned for a streaming future, which is almost certainly where the industry is eventually going to go. If Sony tried to get into streaming today, they'd never catch up to Nvidia and Microsoft and by the team the market was ready, they'd be on the wrong foot once again.

So no, 380 million isn't that much to secure your businesses future. It was an insurance policy and while many people think they don't need insurance because nothing happened, they don't realize the impact of things when you don't have insurance and something does happen.

Same with Sony buying Bungie. There is another universe where Microsoft desperate to bring energy back to Halo after the failure of the tv show, buys Bungie and puts them back onto Halo. They make Halo 6 and the Xbox is right back where it started and Sony is embroiled in competition with Microsoft for another 10 years.

You could also argue that Sony should have bought nvidia, but they weren't really in a position to buy them when it made sense.

 

[ethomaz]

For these that used PS Now for years… yes.

BTW PS Now peaked at over 3 million subscribers plus at some point you could rent games individually so subscribers doesn’t tell the full story here.

 

[Kokoloko]

Despite most of us not using cloud, Sony needs to have the option so yes i guess

 

[RE4-Station]

Hell no, not even 1% of PSN users ever touch cloud and maybe like 12 PC gamers used it to play PS4 games through the cloud. Imagine if all that money was spent on proper backwards compatibility development

I guess that puts me in the top 1% of all time PS Users

 

[Nhomnhom]

They failed miserably to expand it and the reliance on actual PS3 hardware is one of the most stupid and backwards things I've ever seen in a business of this size. Even at the time it was obvious that they would never be able to scale it.

 

[ksdixon]

I'm disappointed by it all.

The streaming tech is still ass. Yes I know, some people have it working from Spain and that. Me? I'll be sat in my back garden chair one day happy as anything. Next day the Portal won't connect or is so blockey it's unplayable. Like I'm sat in the same chair on same Portal as day before, what's different?

PS4 social features weren't all that, and then they got scaled-back again for PS5. I read some article once (that granted I think I misunderstood it entirely), but I had visions of PS Players setting play/stop markers on a game, and creating let's say a "BloodBourne Boss Run" gameplaylist and then sending it as a "PS Challenge" to their friends or sending to game's store page for others to download/stream your curated challenge. OnLive's Brag Clips, evolved. And I fucking hate that it's not a thing.

 

[mibu no ookami]

I'm disappointed by it all.

The streaming tech is still ass. Yes I know, some people have it working from Spain and that. Me? I'll be sat in my back garden chair one day happy as anything. Next day the Portal won't connect or is so blockey it's unplayable. Like I'm sat in the same chair on same Portal as day before, what's different?

PS4 social features weren't all that, and then they got scaled-back again for PS5. I read some article once (that granted I think I misunderstood it entirely), but I had visions of PS Players setting play/stop markers on a game, and creating let's say a "BloodBourne Boss Run" gameplaylist and then sending it as a "PS Challenge" to their friends or sending to game's store page for others to download/stream your curated challenge. OnLive's Brag Clips, evolved. And I fucking hate that it's not a thing.

Imagine conflating remote play and cloud gaming... and not sure what either has to do with social features.

Also if you're sat in your back garden happy as anything and then your portal won't connect, maybe you should realize that you have a network problem.

What's different? Network congestion, latency, interference... This is one of the reasons why I would never want to be in charge of any network based gaming when the quality of experience is so dependent on end users who don't know what they're talking about.

 

[Yurinka]

Yes, it was worth it. It was part of what allowed us to have cloud gaming on PS, and later the equivalent copy for Xbox.

I think that it's still a small nascent market but with a lot of potential for the future, so it is/was also important for Sony to lead the market and its innovation since the start, building a better tech and a bigger catalog than the competition.

 

[FatKaz]

In the short term it wasn't worth it, sony didn't really do much with it when it was used in psnow.

Long term might be worth it, depending on how much of that tech they bought is still useful or helped them accelerate their cloud gaming.

 

[mibu no ookami]

Yes, it was worth it. It was part of what allowed us to have cloud gaming on PS, and later the equivalent copy for Xbox.

I think that it's still a small nascent market but with a lot of potential for the future, so it is/was also important for Sony to lead the market and its innovation since the start, building a better tech and a bigger catalog than the competition.

It's the same with PSVR(2) and people thinking it was a failure.

At no point has Sony put all its eggs into the VR or streaming basket, but they were ready to if they had to. Same thing with PS+.

You look at the PS1 controller and the Dual Sense controller... they're basically the same controller. Sony is piloting a ship and they aren't looking to deviate off course, but they do need to be prepared to deviate if they have to.

Had Sony invested in PC in the early 2000s, Steam wouldn't be a monopoly now and a multitude of their games would have been much bigger hits.

Look at where Epic came from. They were big for making Unreal and Unreal Tournament, which lead to Unreal Engine, which lead to Fortnite. One studio is now one of the biggest companies in gaming.

Imagine if Guerrilla Games and Media Molecule had been exposed to PC gaming earlier. Imagine Naughty Dog and the ICE Team...

Sony won the "console war" but at great cost to actual growth and profitability.

 

[ksdixon]

Imagine conflating remote play and cloud gaming..

.. You know what I mean, bro. It's all counted as non-native/streaming access to games in my eyes. And Portal doesn't do that direct console connect thing like Vita did, so it's bound by the same WiFi setup as the game streaming is.

 

[Yurinka]

It's the same with PSVR(2) and people thinking it was a failure.

At no point has Sony put all its eggs into the VR or streaming basket, but they were ready to if they had to. Same thing with PS+.

You look at the PS1 controller and the Dual Sense controller... they're basically the same controller. Sony is piloting a ship and they aren't looking to deviate off course, but they do need to be prepared to deviate if they have to.

Yes, they innovate on stuff that they know that are long term bets to slowly build on it. Things that they know won't be mainstream at the start, but instead will take many gers

Had Sony invested in PC in the early 2000s, Steam wouldn't be a monopoly now and a multitude of their games would have been much bigger hits.

Look at where Epic came from. They were big for making Unreal and Unreal Tournament, which lead to Unreal Engine, which lead to Fortnite. One studio is now one of the biggest companies in gaming.

Imagine if Guerrilla Games and Media Molecule had been exposed to PC gaming earlier. Imagine Naughty Dog and the ICE Team...

Sony won the "console war" but at great cost to actual growth and profitability.

Sony also released many computer games in the '80s, '90s and 2000s, but I get what you mean.

I think their approach was/is correct. Back then was important to have their games exclusives on their consoles because it as more than enough for them and their console needed it.

Nowadays with Nintendo practically outside home consoles and Xbox dying, and with AAA budgets skyrocketing as usual but this time reaching risky and too high budgets for some game types, and also GaaS addons getting a ton of the game revenue even in consoles, to expand to more platforms and GaaS is something they had to do before it was too late.

 

[Jim Ryan]

A big waste of money and distraction from the important part of the gaming business.

 

[Neversummer]

Hell no, not even 1% of PSN users ever touch cloud and maybe like 12 PC gamers used it to play PS4 games through the cloud. Imagine if all that money was spent on proper backwards compatibility development

Or studios back in the day. Actually back then they could’ve bought either Square or Capcom still don’t understand why Sony didn’t acquire Square or Capcom when they were in the brink of bankruptcy. Ig Sony aren’t sharks, that’s a prime asset (Capcom) that is easily worth 20 billion in gaming, park/merchandise, esport/EVO & entertainment/media. I remember the rumors of MS eyeing Capcom as an acquisition.

Sony would be better of spending 1 million or less & hiring people who emulate PS games on PC & hiring them officially to offer modern PS consoles (PS4/PS5/PS6) PS3 games through emulation that can be purchase for $10 or more. It’s pretty crazy that what 10 years pass & we still don’t have PS3 emulation that plays PS3 games at 60fps 1080 minimum Sony taking extremely long to make simple decisions that adds a benefit for people to buy your console & not go to pc. I feel like Nintendo has a better emulator then PS at this point

 

[ksdixon]

This is one of the reasons why I would never want to be in charge of any network based gaming when the quality of experience is so dependent on end users who don't know what they're talking about.

Aight, I'll own that one. Though there doesn't seem to be much to do when Internet is already 70 a month, and the only thing running on ethernet is the PS5, only thing running on WiFi would be Portal (phone run on data, WiFi band is 5hz so shit like microwave shouldn't cut-in). Save the customer confusion, make a real product which has native storage/downloadability of games. Not the shit Portal and then rumors of a real PSP yet more years down the line, way, waay too late.

Network strengths were no better in 2012 than they are upto today etc. 2nd half of post referring to OnLive's Brag Clips, I'm saying that the social aspects of Gakai/Onlive should have been better integrated and evolved throughout the PS4/5 OS.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Did Gaikai pay off the $380 million after 12 years? No.

Did Sony make the best decision purchasing Gaikai considering the information they had at the time? Probably yes.


Optical internet home connections were already a thing at the time, Europeans and Asians were getting gigabit speeds in their houses, WiFi 5GHz was promising and so was the perspective of 5G.
Developments in latency control ended up not being excellent (especially as ISPs didn't evolve their switching/routing hardware as fast as predicted), and earlier cloud gaming services ended up being a bit too expensive and with questionable business propositions, but in 2012 there was no way to know how this was going to evolve.


Will Gaikai eventually pay off its investment? Probably yes, because with it Sony has IP of their own which they can use to negotiate possible infringements thus avoiding payouts to other IP owners.

 

[mibu no ookami]

.. You know what I mean, bro. It's all counted as non-native/streaming access to games in my eyes. And Portal doesn't do that direct console connect thing like Vita did, so it's bound by the same WiFi setup as the game streaming is.

You don't even realize that you're telling on yourself.

The quality of remote play entirely depends on your home network.

 

[mibu no ookami]

Aight, I'll own that one. Though there doesn't seem to be much to do when Internet is already 70 a month, and the only thing running on ethernet is the PS5, only thing running on WiFi would be Portal (phone run on data, WiFi band is 5hz so shit like microwave shouldn't cut-in). Save the customer confusion, make a real product which has native storage/downloadability of games. Not the shit Portal and then rumors of a real PSP yet more years down the line, way, waay too late.

Network strengths were no better in 2012 than they are upto today etc. 2nd half of post referring to OnLive's Brag Clips, I'm saying that the social aspects of Gakai/Onlive should have been better integrated and evolved throughout the PS4/5 OS.

I bet you anything that you are using a router/modem combination provided by your ISP and that you think that is sufficient for consistent play in what was your own words, your back garden chair.

Consumer confusion? Why'd you buy it if it isn't something that you understood?