The big news yesterday was that Sony has acquired cloud gaming service Gaikai for a whopping $380 million which obviously points to the cloud being a major force for Sony moving forward. As such the obvious question was put to Microsoft in regards to what are their thoughts on the move and the cloud?
According to Microsoft in a response to GameIndustry
The cloud has been a key component of our strategy and a big area of investment with Xbox for many years. Through Xbox LIVE we’re serving up gaming and entertainment in the cloud to more than 40 million people
We’re committed to delivering extraordinary entertainment experiences across devices in a uniquely connected way through Xbox, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and other popular devices, and we’re looking forward to continuing to innovate in this space in the future.
In essence it’s a really bland response but if you want to read between the lines we could pick up that Microsoft is implying it’s the leader in the field as it says it has been a big area of investment for many years and therefore isn’t just jumping on the bandwagon now.
That’s possibly stretching but the second part is a complete dig at Sony when they state they are continuing to innovate in this space instead of buying their way in I guess.
There were some rumours that Microsoft may have been interested in acquiring OnLive but I don’t think that will happen as Microsoft is foremost a software company and wouldn’t want to be seen relying on another company for its cloud solution. If they do purchase OnLive expect it to be billed as a talent acquisition and the OnLive server itself to then be shut down.
Last Updated: July 3, 2012
