The game-streaming future has arrived. Sure, there have been a few teething problems, but Stadia, along with PlayStation Now and Microsoft’s in-beta xCloud all prove that those sorts of services are viable. They may not get players to ditch their PCs or consoles, but they’re an option for those who don’t necessarily want local hardware. The next big player in that segment is obviously Amazon – and it’s been rumoured that they’ll launch a game streaming option in the future. They’ve acquired a handful of developers over the last few years, and have scalable, nearly global server technology to make it happen.

Now, without explicitly saying as much, PS4 cross platform play is out of beta. According to Wired, in an extensive interview about PlayStation Now with Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Jim Ryan, Cross play is now out of beta and any developer who wishes to use the functionality may do so.

Gaming subscription services have really started taking off – and there’s a good reason for that. Games – which are a luxury item – cost a heck of a lot of money, so capped subscription services make a lot of sense. It’s more economically feasible for many to pay a single monthly fee that offers a smorgasbord of games than it is to buy new games all the time. And with services like Microsoft’s Game Pass and EA’s Access ones, those subscriptions even net you the newest games from those publishers.

Google is attempting to test game streaming directly to Chrome, starting with Assassin's Creed Odyssey later this week.

Despite only offering a streaming solution for years now, PlayStation Now will start rolling out the ability for users to download PS4 and PS2 games directly to improve the playing experience.

…using Sony’s PlayStation Now Service – which lets users close to their datacentres stream playable games to PC or other supported hardware.

PlayStation fans have been wanting something a bit more concrete in terms of backwards compatibility, and while PlayStation Europe boss Jim Ryan has acknowledged those calls for the system to start offering some proper legacy support for games, he reckons that even if they came up with a solution it wouldn’t be used all that often.

The Nintendo Switch is taking console gaming on the go, but Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima believes it to be a step towards a cloud future.