Whereas Microsoft has been talking about the ‘infinite power of the cloud’ in all its marketing for the Xbox One so far, it’s probably easy to forget that Sony, too, is utilizing cloud based gaming for its upcoming Playstation 4, if only to provide the console, which uses an entirely different x86 based hardware architecture (different from its predecessors, that were all PowerPC based), backwards compatibility.
Today, Sony outlined its plans for that with some concrete detail, confirming that the service will not be available at launch later this year, and that it will be patched in in early 2014 instead.
Sony bought Gaikai for $380 million last summer, and it was introduced for the PS4 during the console’s reveal event this past February. In addition to providing backwards compatibility, it is anticipated that Gaikai will be used for features like instant game streaming, instant demos and allowing friends to take over gameplay.