CNBC-"Sony doesn't Have a Cloud Presence" "MS has Big Head start"

That's basically where this is all being laid. However, the way they are posing it still makes sense in the event they want to ensure all the same auxillary services are supported and consistent on everything from an iPad, to an android phone, to a PC. Emulating these auxillary services would ensure service and experience parity between any device they run on so in the short run it makes sense if their intention is just to get the Xbox experience on as many devices as possible. Just want to add, because I thought about them flipping between PC and console versions of a game and it wouldn't make sense because the saves wouldn't transfer.

wow @michaelmikado straight educating the unwashed masses in here.

I guess no one watched the video I posted. And I am confused by it as well.

Brad Sams is saying they will also be using Xbox consoles owned by consumers to power the cloud, and there are different tears of the service that MS sells therefore it makes more sense to put a lot into the consoles and could be offset by how they can monetize the consoles as servers. - just my loose interpretation summed up quickly.

Trust me it confuses me, and I have yet to find anyone that can really explain all the questions that creates. It kind of sounds like the old cell phone days ( On certain networks) where you might not be near a tower but can use another user in the area to boost your own signal. Not sure if that is a good analogy or not.

Really digging the conversation this has turned into. Thank you guys, you rule!

This is a good example and I'll explain what this means. If your service is dynamically switching between the PC and Xbox version of the game based on the hardware you are playing from then there is not guarantee of save compatibility. So if you are playing from your Xbox you see you xbox saves and friends. But then you jump to you PC, or iPad or tablet and suddenly you have to start the game over with nothing and none of you Live friends appear. This is why the customer experience is important and emulating that experience for consistency is paramount. Otherwise you're just going to piss off a bunch of customers who dropped hours into a game and don't understand why their game saves aren't saved or transferable.

Remember not every game is an Xbox Playanywhere game and of the thousands of Xog, X360, and Xb1 games on 95 titles are Play anywhere enabled, meaning if you were to do the switching you were talking about, its almost a certainty your game saves would be incompatible and unable to transfer.

So, this is the part you are missing. For compatibility and consistent end user experience MS needs, no MUST have a consistent end user experience where the user can pick up where they left off. To do this, they can't have a scenario where the game flips back and forth between the PC and Xbox version. MS decided the easiest way to accommodate this is to just make all XB1 games cloud enabled, which does solve that immediate problem, but forces them to have cloud hardware to run games developed to run on Xbox hardware. Their solution: put Xbox hardware in the cloud.

Sorry, saw the video. So it sounds like they are talking cluster or distributed processing ala Folding @ home that was already done 10 years ago on the PS3. I even make a Beowulf cluster myself and have been a huge advocate of distributed processing, but using home consoles to aid isn't going to get you much in the way of processor cycles at all. I can only think that they may leverage them as download caches the way Windows 10 does for updates because that's not real-time or latency sensitive.

Anyway, as far as most of the other stuff he's talking about Sony, already does it but without the marketing spin. Example. PSvita and PSTV and all their Bravia TV, android apps etc are all less powerful than PS3s but they ran cloud PS3 games from the cloud. Sony was way ahead of its time in that regard. I can go into more detail later but want to respond to others.

No nothing is being understood by these posts. This shows a lack of understanding of cloud infrastructure. A better analogy is who is better equipped to make a rental service for cars? Ford because they own the car manufacturing or Enterprise because they have years of experience in the business and can pull from other car manufacturers. In this scenario, Ford has tons of years of experience making cars and selling to rental services. That doesn't mean that because they make the cars, and they don't mark them up, that they immediately have the infrastructure and knowledge to do so. Otherwise Ford would, you know already be renting the cars out themselves...……..

Anyway we can roll all the way back to 2013 if we want to. In 2013, MS promised that Xbox One, despite being less powerful than Sony, had the power of the cloud that made it like having 5x the power of an Xbox One. It's 2019 and anyone who knew anything about what an actual "cloud" consisted of called MS's BS marketing. In 2013 there simply didn't exist Cloud GPU resources for them to even begin to make that claim. As far as Amazon I've already explained how Sony subsidizes their infrastructure investments. Amazon's game service will likely run on the same servers as Sony's. Even the video the OP posted has the guy making the same conclusions about Azure. If you know anything about cloud services then you understand how it works.

But I could be wrong but I have to wonder if Sony is so far ahead and already have everything in place where is their equivalent to xcloud? MS is talking about doing this this year with current gen games not Xbox 360 or OG Xbox games. When will Sony announce PSnow game streaming to all devices besides just PS and Pc? Do they even have the resources to do it?

What are you talking about???? PS3 blades put in data centers in 2014!!!! MS is doing the same exact thing Sony did but 5 years later!!! PSNow plays PS4 games.

PSNow has OVER 275 PS4 games!!! Sony has more than 2x the number of PS4 titles than Microsoft has on its entire Game Pass library right!!! Over 700 games total!!!

PSNow originally ran on everything from Android, Vita, Bravia TVs, etc. YES they obviously had the resources!!! If you actually read the posts you will understand why the change was made, and they were able to reduce the number of supported devices because they literally have had ZERO competition in the market for the past 5 years.

As a matter of fact, seems like Sony is doing fine: https://www.vg247.com/2018/11/10/playstation-now-143-million-lead-earner/

Sony is literally making more money on PSNow than all of the other services combined and that's just 1 yearly quarter or estimated to be over half a Billion dollars from PS now annually. Estimates are that PSnow has between 5-10 million paying subscribers.

According to the SuperData report, game subscription services brought in $273 million during 2018’s third quarter, 52% of which was attributed to PlayStation Now.

Revenue from PS Now totaled $143 million, and EA’s Access services contributed $90 million or 33%.

The differences in percentage for EA services were as follows: EA Access (Xbox One) 16%, Origin Access Premier 9%, Origin Access (PC) 8%.

Xbox Game Pass contributed 15%,or $41 million, to overall subscription revenues during Q3 2018.

Just realized that for many people there isn’t a good explanation of why the Microsoft’s Cloud of 2013 was laughed at but the cloud in 2019 is looked at differently. I’d be happy to go over that if anyone is interested.

Still using Gears 4 as an example. If I start the game on a Nvidia run pc, and then start playing later on my xbox, I pick up where I left off. I would assume streaming would be the same. All MS game saves are saved on the cloud. Why would that suddenly stop working? That makes no sense. The service switching dynamically shouldn't matter, because the service they have now switches dynamically, is saved on the cloud, and works just fine. If you're streaming, the saves on the cloud that it retrieves currently, doesn't suddenly not work just because you begin streaming rather than playing it locally.

@babyjoker1221:

Gears of War 4 is an Xbox play anywhere title so the games saves are compatible. That issue wouldn’t apply to the 95 or so games this supports....

But it does apply to the hundreds of XB1 games or the 1000s of games on Microsoft’s total portfolio. That would NOT support that.

The games would have to be specifically designed for that via Xbox play anywhere to support that feature and unless MS xCloud is launching with only 95 games then you aren’t getting to switch between Xbox and PC versions of games and keep your saves.

@michaelmikado: It seems as though you're trying to just console fanboy a bit at this point with your last couple of posts. This is System Wars though, so you're in the right place.

You're theories have several holes in them though. Every time either myself or someone else poses the problem with what you're saying, your explanation only leads to more problems with what you're saying.

• You state that MS is at a serious disadvantage compared to Sony due to Azure being utilized by Nvidia hardware despite MS games already working on Nvidia driven pcs.

• You explain the options that MS can take in order to get their infrastructure in line to streaming their games.

• Upon finding out that MS is already well underway with one of your previously mentioned options, suddenly that option becomes invalid, and won't really work that well.

• Upon being informed that MS games now days run on Nvidia GPUs and are thus in line with their Azure counterparts... Game saves is now the issue, despite all MS game saves already being saved on the cloud currently.

• Now you've moved yet again to financials, and are pointing out how much money PSNOW makes... Which has nothing to do with what we're talking about. You're beginning to stray into ronvalencia territory here.

• Now you're willing to explain why MS's cloud was laughed at in 2013, but Sony's cloud in 2019 is different, when nobody has really asked for that. For what it's worth, Xbox using cloud compute for Forza and Titanfall 1 worked as advertised. They weren't talking about streaming in 2013.

I'm not trying to bag on you, or demean you or anything. Your explanations, and terminology makes it obvious that you are versed in the subject, but the more people question you, the more it just looks like you're trying to find reasons why MS can't do it. First it was Nvidia rather than AMD, then it was how they're implementing AMD, then it was game save data, etc..

@michaelmikado said:

@babyjoker1221 said:

@slimdogmilionar said:

Irony is comedy, this thread is hilarious. Rewind to 2013 and all of these cows said cloud was nothing and would never be a reality and even so far as to criticize MS for investing in the cloud.

Fast forward to today and all of a sudden Sony is the leader in cloud computing and has the best cloud infrastructure because they bought not one but two failing game streaming services that didn’t even own the servers they where using, Gaikai and on live where using Amazon and Rackspace servers. There are no dedicated Sony data centers they have to rent servers from companies that will soon be their competition in cloud services. Sony using Amazon servers going forward would be the same as them using MS servers to power PSN, paying your competition to power a service that you guys are actively competing with each other for the top spot. The former owner of onlive said in the source that MS is the only company that has everything needed to make this happen yet fanboys want to disagree and deny this. The price Sony paid for both of those services together is nowhere near 1/4 of the amount the big 3 have invested in their cloud infrastructures over the past decade. Until Sony actually has their own cloud infrastructure they can’t compete with MS, Google, or Amazon. Do you guys really think Amazon would abandon their pursuit of game streaming to fully support Sony while Google and MS keep moving forward? Sony needs global, scalable data centers and currently MS has the most of those and keeps investing billions into Azure.

But I could be wrong but I have to wonder if Sony is so far ahead and already have everything in place where is their equivalent to xcloud? MS is talking about doing this this year with current gen games not Xbox 360 or OG Xbox games. When will Sony announce PSnow game streaming to all devices besides just PS and Pc? Do they even have the resources to do it?

^This guy gets it!!!

We can debate the finer tech points. Some of us can learn a few things, and the points brought up are interesting.

The overall bigger picture presented here by some is absurd though. We can discuss the hurdles MS has when it comes to streaming, and criticize some of their methods used. That's fine, but to argue that Sony has all this infrastructure in place, and is a leader in cloud computing is beyond me. It's like trying to debate which car manufacturer is better Ford or Enterprise. Then explaining how Enterprise is better because of all their infrastructure and such is better. It's honestly LOL worthy.

No nothing is being understood by these posts. This shows a lack of understanding of cloud infrastructure. A better analogy is who is better equipped to make a rental service for cars? Ford because they own the car manufacturing or Enterprise because they have years of experience in the business and can pull from other car manufacturers. In this scenario, Ford has tons of years of experience making cars and selling to rental services. That doesn't mean that because they make the cars, and they don't mark them up, that they immediately have the infrastructure and knowledge to do so. Otherwise Ford would, you know already be renting the cars out themselves...……..

Anyway we can roll all the way back to 2013 if we want to. In 2013, MS promised that Xbox One, despite being less powerful than Sony, had the power of the cloud that made it like having 5x the power of an Xbox One. It's 2019 and anyone who knew anything about what an actual "cloud" consisted of called MS's BS marketing. In 2013 there simply didn't exist Cloud GPU resources for them to even begin to make that claim. As far as Amazon I've already explained how Sony subsidizes their infrastructure investments. Amazon's game service will likely run on the same servers as Sony's. Even the video the OP posted has the guy making the same conclusions about Azure. If you know anything about cloud services then you understand how it works.

But I could be wrong but I have to wonder if Sony is so far ahead and already have everything in place where is their equivalent to xcloud? MS is talking about doing this this year with current gen games not Xbox 360 or OG Xbox games. When will Sony announce PSnow game streaming to all devices besides just PS and Pc? Do they even have the resources to do it?

What are you talking about???? PS3 blades put in data centers in 2014!!!! MS is doing the same exact thing Sony did but 5 years later!!! PSNow plays PS4 games.

PSNow has OVER 275 PS4 games!!! Sony has more than 2x the number of PS4 titles than Microsoft has on its entire Game Pass library right!!! Over 700 games total!!!

PSNow originally ran on everything from Android, Vita, Bravia TVs, etc. YES they obviously had the resources!!! If you actually read the posts you will understand why the change was made, and they were able to reduce the number of supported devices because they literally have had ZERO competition in the market for the past 5 years.

As a matter of fact, seems like Sony is doing fine: https://www.vg247.com/2018/11/10/playstation-now-143-million-lead-earner/

Sony is literally making more money on PSNow than all of the other services combined and that's just 1 yearly quarter or estimated to be over half a Billion dollars from PS now annually. Estimates are that PSnow has between 5-10 million paying subscribers.

According to the SuperData report, game subscription services brought in $273 million during 2018’s third quarter, 52% of which was attributed to PlayStation Now.

Revenue from PS Now totaled $143 million, and EA’s Access services contributed $90 million or 33%.

The differences in percentage for EA services were as follows: EA Access (Xbox One) 16%, Origin Access Premier 9%, Origin Access (PC) 8%.

Xbox Game Pass contributed 15%,or $41 million, to overall subscription revenues during Q3 2018.

Amazon-owns their cloud infrastructure

Google-owns their cloud infrastructure

Microsoft-owns their cloud infrastructure

Sony-rents servers from Amazon/Rackspace

This is not about cloud infrastructure, it's about competition. Your Ford/Enterprise analogy is not a good one because Ford is not in competition with Enterprise, they are in competition with companies like Nissan, Honda, Chevy, etc. Enterprise rents cars and Ford sells them(to Enterprise), two completely different markets, most people don't go to a rental place looking to buy a Ford they go to a Ford dealership because they want to own the car. Rental cars are used for when you don't want to or cant use the car you already own. Going by your analogy Sony does not own a car so they would be renting from Enterprise. Sony is gonna be in direct competition with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in cloud game streaming, this is part of the reason I feel like PsNow has regressed. They have to pay Amazon and Rackspace for these servers and the more servers they want the more they have to pay, not to mention because they don't own the servers they have limitations to what they can and cannot do. Why do you think PSnow is $20 a month while Gamepass is only $10. Who in their right mind would want to be in a scenario where your competition can dictate the services you provide to your customers? Why do you think Apple stopped using Azure servers? This is why the article is saying that MS has a head start because Azure is their service and it's one of the best out there, they already have over 80% of the fortune 500 companies in their back pocket and they are the biggest cloud infrastructure out of the big 3, although Amazon is the best for computing. Eventually Sony will have to leave Amazon, because as this thing plays out and becomes a reality Amazon will have complete control over the scope of PsNow. You know why? Because they own the servers and they are not about to help their competition gain ground, that's not good business. And again you can throw all of the numbers around about how much money Sony made on video games and game subscriptions, but those numbers are pennies to the big 3, they probably look at Sony's revenue and say "AWW that's cute Sony made $200 million dollars this quarter". These companies make billions of their cloud, last I looked MS was over $4 billion in one quarter, and that's just for Azure not counting the rest of the company.

So if Sony is using it's competitions servers to power PSnow and have no cloud presence of their own all of the blades and the PsNow library they have built up will have to go right back to ground zero when they do decide to start building their own data centers. This is not about who did it first, it's about who has the resources to actually make it happen on a global scale available on all devices, and Microsoft is ready right now. Imagine how much money Sony would have to pony up to get Amazon to build more data centers to power PsNow. PsNow will have to go backwards before it can go forward, maybe not a complete reset, but they will have to dial it back a little to get things off the ground if they decided to start building data centers, but then again building regional data centers just to power PsNow is a tall order for a company just now getting back on their feet. They don't make enough money to actually compete with the big 3 cloud services outside of gaming, so all of the money for their cloud is gonna have to come from PS profits, and PS profits just wont cut it when your competitions monthly revenue is your yearly revenue. The worst thing that can happen to Sony is to have the big 3 competing for the gaming, do you think they really care about PsNow, maybe only Amazon because they get paid from it, but in the grand scheme of things do you really think they are threatened by the presence of PsNow, Amazon or Rackspace could axe the service at any point and Sony would be cloudless. So basically Sony has no cloud presence, their cloud presence is dictated by whoever they rent servers from, meanwhile Microsofts cloud presence is strong and dictated by Microsoft.

@slimdogmilionar: Yeah, the Ford/Enterprise analogy was a poor one. I was merely trying to point out the silliness of saying that Sony has a massive advantage going forward in streaming when their whole service will be dictated by a competitor.

I keep hearing the comparison to Netflix, and how they don't own their servers, and how despite Amazon competing with them, that they still rent servers to them. The comparison doesn't really translate though. Simply streaming video doesn't require the unique hardware upgrades that strraming games does. There's enough companies out there, that if Amazon decided to deny Netflix access to their servers, there is enough other options out there for Netflix to use... and succeed anyway. So it's just lost business.

With game streaming it's a bit different though. If Amazon decided to deny Sony access at some point, it's not like Sony would have tons of other options out there. The other options out there are all getting into offering their own game streaming services as well. Amazon knows that in this situation, Sony couldn't just go elsewhere like Netflix, and still succeed. They could literally force Sony to price itself out of the market by continuing to charge Sony more and more as Sony becomes more reliant upon them. All while ramping up their own service at a much cheaper price. They then get to enjoy the profits from PSNOW, while slowly migrating many of those users over to their service over time as PSNOW becomes more and more expensive.

Everything here of course I'd speculation for the most part. None of knows exactly what these companies have in store, or who will do what.

@babyjoker1221 said:@michaelmikado: It seems as though you're trying to just console fanboy a bit at this point with your last couple of posts. This is System Wars though, so you're in the right place.

You're theories have several holes in them though. Every time either myself or someone else poses the problem with what you're saying, your explanation only leads to more problems with what you're saying.

• You state that MS is at a serious disadvantage compared to Sony due to Azure being utilized by Nvidia hardware despite MS games already working on Nvidia driven pcs.

• You explain the options that MS can take in order to get their infrastructure in line to streaming their games.

• Upon finding out that MS is already well underway with one of your previously mentioned options, suddenly that option becomes invalid, and won't really work that well.

• Upon being informed that MS games now days run on Nvidia GPUs and are thus in line with their Azure counterparts... Game saves is now the issue, despite all MS game saves already being saved on the cloud currently.

• Now you've moved yet again to financials, and are pointing out how much money PSNOW makes... Which has nothing to do with what we're talking about. You're beginning to stray into ronvalencia territory here.

• Now you're willing to explain why MS's cloud was laughed at in 2013, but Sony's cloud in 2019 is different, when nobody has really asked for that. For what it's worth, Xbox using cloud compute for Forza and Titanfall 1 worked as advertised. They weren't talking about streaming in 2013.

I'm not trying to bag on you, or demean you or anything. Your explanations, and terminology makes it obvious that you are versed in the subject, but the more people question you, the more it just looks like you're trying to find reasons why MS can't do it. First it was Nvidia rather than AMD, then it was how they're implementing AMD, then it was game save data, etc..

Unfortunately every single one of these points has been explained at length, but I will go ahead and consolidate and respond since you consolidated them.

You state that MS is at a serious disadvantage compared to Sony due to Azure being utilized by Nvidia hardware despite MS games already working on Nvidia driven pcs.

Yes, because Microsoft wants to play XBOX games which are NOT BUILT TO RUN ON NVIDIA GPUS!!!!! It's not rocket science. You would run PC games which are designed to be GPU agnostic on these server machines!! This is the fundamental failing of understanding in this thread.

You explain the options that MS can take in order to get their infrastructure in line to streaming their games.

• Upon finding out that MS is already well underway with one of your previously mentioned options, suddenly that option becomes invalid, and won't really work that well.

• Upon being informed that MS games now days run on Nvidia GPUs and are thus in line with their Azure counterparts... Game saves is now the issue, despite all MS game saves already being saved on the cloud currently.

Again, this is a failure of understanding, NOT validity. Microsoft games are are the publisher and developer. Xbox is the platform game are made for. Xbox games out of the box are not immediately compatible to run on PCs without 1) emulating the hardware. 2) running on the hardware itself. Which AGAIN is why you need AMD GPU hardware to ensure low-level compatibility otherwise they need to emulate it which if difficult if not impossible (an probably illegal) to do at high performance levels. If you CANNOT understand this basic, fundamental fact than this cannot be a dicussion on any technical level. Microsoft wants to run Xbox XBOX XBOX games. PC and XBOX games cannot be run interchangeably. They are developed differently with different platforms in mind.

Further I never stated that them putting using Xboxes in servers wouldn't. To the contrary I said it WILL work in the short term. The issue is, as I stated multiple times is the methods they are getting to roll out right now. ARE THE SAME METHODS SONY USED 5 YEARS AGO WHEN PSNOW FIRST ROLLED OUT. There's no getting around the fact that Microsoft is talking about using the same infrastructure methods that Sony already did in 2014, here in 2019. I never stated they won't work, rather than Microsoft is behind Sony.

As far as cloud saves, If you don't understand why you can't just take any old game save from a PC game, put it on a USB drive and expect to play it on the Xbox 1 version, then you literally may not be qualified or capable of understanding nor discussing the technical merits of the implementation and it's just a waste of everyone's time... This is not a put-down but understanding why game saves don't "transfer" from your PS4 to your Xbox to your PC without specifically being developed for that purpose is fundamental to a basic understanding before we can discuss the technical limits of cloud hardware.

Now you've moved yet again to financials, and are pointing out how much money PSNOW makes... Which has nothing to do with what we're talking about. You're beginning to stray into ronvalencia territory here.

• Now you're willing to explain why MS's cloud was laughed at in 2013, but Sony's cloud in 2019 is different, when nobody has really asked for that. For what it's worth, Xbox using cloud compute for Forza and Titanfall 1 worked as advertised. They weren't talking about streaming in 2013.

I don't have a horse in this race and look forward to cloud services from Microsoft. As I've already said I've used almost every single cloud gaming solution ever, betaed Onlive, and Project Stream and I will use Microsoft's when it releases. I was replying to the individual who was discussion the cost of the companies Sony purchased and I was simply showing how much money Sony's investment is actually making. Nothing more. My whole discussion is that Microsoft is 5 years behind Sony in this space which isn't debatable.

That's why stating a company which has yet to release a commercial cloud gaming service is somehow the best and Sony's half a billion dollar a year in revenue service doesn't have a "cloud presence" is absurd. That's the debate. It's not that Sony's will ALWAYS be better, but that Sony has a working service, making money, right this minute. No hypotheticals needed.

Now as far as 2013 cloud, Microsoft talked about the cloud processing abilities being equivalent to 3 Xbox 1s. It was asinine marketing speak unless you're telling me Forza and Titanfall meet those marketing speak expectations. You may not be interested in knowing about it, but others with more technical insight who may be interested.

So all these questions have been answered and addressed multiple times but I will recap so it creates one post you can reference.

Microsoft wants to allow gamers to play Xbox 1 games in the cloud as best that we can tell:

They need AMD cloud hardware to do it. Existing Azure infrastructure will not support this.

Microsoft's solution is to make XBox1 servers and they tell everyone that's what they are using and running games on.

Their xCloud service depends on them having and making enough of these servers built so a capital cost to their infrastructure. It's the same thing Sony did 5 years ago when they launched and have since moved away from.

Attempting to run on Azure hardware would mean running PC game versions. They can do that, but only 95 of their 1000s of games in the Microsoft catalog would be able to switch between running the PC and Xbox version dynamically. They could always run the 1st party Xbox Anywhere games on Azure and the rest on the xCloud servers, but again that's a very limited number of games out of their total catalog.

@slimdogmilionar said:

@michaelmikado said:

@babyjoker1221 said:

@slimdogmilionar said:

Irony is comedy, this thread is hilarious. Rewind to 2013 and all of these cows said cloud was nothing and would never be a reality and even so far as to criticize MS for investing in the cloud.

Fast forward to today and all of a sudden Sony is the leader in cloud computing and has the best cloud infrastructure because they bought not one but two failing game streaming services that didn’t even own the servers they where using, Gaikai and on live where using Amazon and Rackspace servers. There are no dedicated Sony data centers they have to rent servers from companies that will soon be their competition in cloud services. Sony using Amazon servers going forward would be the same as them using MS servers to power PSN, paying your competition to power a service that you guys are actively competing with each other for the top spot. The former owner of onlive said in the source that MS is the only company that has everything needed to make this happen yet fanboys want to disagree and deny this. The price Sony paid for both of those services together is nowhere near 1/4 of the amount the big 3 have invested in their cloud infrastructures over the past decade. Until Sony actually has their own cloud infrastructure they can’t compete with MS, Google, or Amazon. Do you guys really think Amazon would abandon their pursuit of game streaming to fully support Sony while Google and MS keep moving forward? Sony needs global, scalable data centers and currently MS has the most of those and keeps investing billions into Azure.

But I could be wrong but I have to wonder if Sony is so far ahead and already have everything in place where is their equivalent to xcloud? MS is talking about doing this this year with current gen games not Xbox 360 or OG Xbox games. When will Sony announce PSnow game streaming to all devices besides just PS and Pc? Do they even have the resources to do it?

^This guy gets it!!!

We can debate the finer tech points. Some of us can learn a few things, and the points brought up are interesting.

The overall bigger picture presented here by some is absurd though. We can discuss the hurdles MS has when it comes to streaming, and criticize some of their methods used. That's fine, but to argue that Sony has all this infrastructure in place, and is a leader in cloud computing is beyond me. It's like trying to debate which car manufacturer is better Ford or Enterprise. Then explaining how Enterprise is better because of all their infrastructure and such is better. It's honestly LOL worthy.

No nothing is being understood by these posts. This shows a lack of understanding of cloud infrastructure. A better analogy is who is better equipped to make a rental service for cars? Ford because they own the car manufacturing or Enterprise because they have years of experience in the business and can pull from other car manufacturers. In this scenario, Ford has tons of years of experience making cars and selling to rental services. That doesn't mean that because they make the cars, and they don't mark them up, that they immediately have the infrastructure and knowledge to do so. Otherwise Ford would, you know already be renting the cars out themselves...……..

Anyway we can roll all the way back to 2013 if we want to. In 2013, MS promised that Xbox One, despite being less powerful than Sony, had the power of the cloud that made it like having 5x the power of an Xbox One. It's 2019 and anyone who knew anything about what an actual "cloud" consisted of called MS's BS marketing. In 2013 there simply didn't exist Cloud GPU resources for them to even begin to make that claim. As far as Amazon I've already explained how Sony subsidizes their infrastructure investments. Amazon's game service will likely run on the same servers as Sony's. Even the video the OP posted has the guy making the same conclusions about Azure. If you know anything about cloud services then you understand how it works.

But I could be wrong but I have to wonder if Sony is so far ahead and already have everything in place where is their equivalent to xcloud? MS is talking about doing this this year with current gen games not Xbox 360 or OG Xbox games. When will Sony announce PSnow game streaming to all devices besides just PS and Pc? Do they even have the resources to do it?

What are you talking about???? PS3 blades put in data centers in 2014!!!! MS is doing the same exact thing Sony did but 5 years later!!! PSNow plays PS4 games.

PSNow has OVER 275 PS4 games!!! Sony has more than 2x the number of PS4 titles than Microsoft has on its entire Game Pass library right!!! Over 700 games total!!!

PSNow originally ran on everything from Android, Vita, Bravia TVs, etc. YES they obviously had the resources!!! If you actually read the posts you will understand why the change was made, and they were able to reduce the number of supported devices because they literally have had ZERO competition in the market for the past 5 years.

As a matter of fact, seems like Sony is doing fine: https://www.vg247.com/2018/11/10/playstation-now-143-million-lead-earner/

Sony is literally making more money on PSNow than all of the other services combined and that's just 1 yearly quarter or estimated to be over half a Billion dollars from PS now annually. Estimates are that PSnow has between 5-10 million paying subscribers.

According to the SuperData report, game subscription services brought in $273 million during 2018’s third quarter, 52% of which was attributed to PlayStation Now.

Revenue from PS Now totaled $143 million, and EA’s Access services contributed $90 million or 33%.

The differences in percentage for EA services were as follows: EA Access (Xbox One) 16%, Origin Access Premier 9%, Origin Access (PC) 8%.

Xbox Game Pass contributed 15%,or $41 million, to overall subscription revenues during Q3 2018.

Amazon-owns their cloud infrastructure

Google-owns their cloud infrastructure

Microsoft-owns their cloud infrastructure

Sony-rents servers from Amazon/Rackspace

This is not about cloud infrastructure, it's about competition. Your Ford/Enterprise analogy is not a good one because Ford is not in competition with Enterprise, they are in competition with companies like Nissan, Honda, Chevy, etc. Enterprise rents cars and Ford sells them(to Enterprise), two completely different markets, most people don't go to a rental place looking to buy a Ford they go to a Ford dealership because they want to own the car. Rental cars are used for when you don't want to or cant use the car you already own. Going by your analogy Sony does not own a car so they would be renting from Enterprise. Sony is gonna be in direct competition with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in cloud game streaming, this is part of the reason I feel like PsNow has regressed. They have to pay Amazon and Rackspace for these servers and the more servers they want the more they have to pay, not to mention because they don't own the servers they have limitations to what they can and cannot do. Why do you think PSnow is $20 a month while Gamepass is only $10. Who in their right mind would want to be in a scenario where your competition can dictate the services you provide to your customers? Why do you think Apple stopped using Azure servers? This is why the article is saying that MS has a head start because Azure is their service and it's one of the best out there, they already have over 80% of the fortune 500 companies in their back pocket and they are the biggest cloud infrastructure out of the big 3, although Amazon is the best for computing. Eventually Sony will have to leave Amazon, because as this thing plays out and becomes a reality Amazon will have complete control over the scope of PsNow. You know why? Because they own the servers and they are not about to help their competition gain ground, that's not good business. And again you can throw all of the numbers around about how much money Sony made on video games and game subscriptions, but those numbers are pennies to the big 3, they probably look at Sony's revenue and say "AWW that's cute Sony made $200 million dollars this quarter". These companies make billions of their cloud, last I looked MS was over $4 billion in one quarter, and that's just for Azure not counting the rest of the company.

So if Sony is using it's competitions servers to power PSnow and have no cloud presence of their own all of the blades and the PsNow library they have built up will have to go right back to ground zero when they do decide to start building their own data centers. This is not about who did it first, it's about who has the resources to actually make it happen on a global scale available on all devices, and Microsoft is ready right now. Imagine how much money Sony would have to pony up to get Amazon to build more data centers to power PsNow. PsNow will have to go backwards before it can go forward, maybe not a complete reset, but they will have to dial it back a little to get things off the ground if they decided to start building data centers, but then again building regional data centers just to power PsNow is a tall order for a company just now getting back on their feet. They don't make enough money to actually compete with the big 3 cloud services outside of gaming, so all of the money for their cloud is gonna have to come from PS profits, and PS profits just wont cut it when your competitions monthly revenue is your yearly revenue. The worst thing that can happen to Sony is to have the big 3 competing for the gaming, do you think they really care about PsNow, maybe only Amazon because they get paid from it, but in the grand scheme of things do you really think they are threatened by the presence of PsNow, Amazon or Rackspace could axe the service at any point and Sony would be cloudless. So basically Sony has no cloud presence, their cloud presence is dictated by whoever they rent servers from, meanwhile Microsofts cloud presence is strong and dictated by Microsoft.

I really don't want to belabor the analogy but you do know Enterprise sells cars too while simultaneously purchasing fleet cars from Ford. Just because they compete in some markets does not mean they don't partner in other. Real Big Boy companies don't consist of diehard fanboys.

PSnow is $20 a month because it is a streaming service and has over 700 games. So about 3 cents per game. Versus Gamepass which has 100 games and 10 bucks a month for about 10 cents a game......

But ignoring that you have no idea who datacenters work. I actually started reading the rest and realized this is pointless. I'll just break it done. Sony can run on any datacenter in the world that have V340 hardware. Microsoft doesn't even own most of its Azure network, much of it is leased, from datacenters themselves. Microsoft isn't actually managing 1000s of data farms around the world, it has local providers who house, host, and lease space to MS. You entire assumption is that Microsoft literally own everything with Azure on it. LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!! I'm literally crying about this right now...

Look, I'm not even going to do this right now but I'll give you some hints. I'm a sys admin who recently moved 2 10000+ plus users to MS cloud services and O365. I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE MS Azure services. I built an entire SaaS model medical software ordering system using 3 different data farms for performance, redundancy, and data recovery. As such I have a good idea of MS's limitations in the space and its strengths. You have ZERO idea what you are talking about. If AWS upped the price, Sony just finds datafarms running the specs they need and spin up VMs on them. That's the point! Sony isn't stuck with AWS by any means at all. The reason it works is because AWS is the single biggest provider for AMD cloud services that Sony needs and the amount Sony spends helps subsidize AWS growth. It's exactly how Netflix works. They just snatch up the local server farm providers that meet their specifications. That's all. They don't need to own their own server farms because it limits your physical location and your reach while increasing you startup capital, cost and maintenance.

Example, if your services are built around SaaS products you can get away with paying a set price based on process cycles and actual resources consumed rather than having idle processors. Good example, Netflix has peak times of day and year, because they scale Netflix pays only for the time users are using the servers so if they have 1 million concurrent users they pay the cost for 1 million concurrent users in server time. If they have 1000 users they only pay for 1000 users concurrently in server time. If you house your own servers you have to buy enough to reach your peak times while they idle during your low user times. That's how cloud services and SaaS works. Basically the ideal situation is if there is a large disparity between peak and off peak hours you would ideally pay for the server time you are actually using and scale/spin up VMs as load demands.

Just to cap this off. Microsoft doesn't seem to be going this route because they "want" to, rather it looks like they feel this is the best route to take in the immediate term while they are launching the service.

Sure Amazon could do just that, but Sony can just use any other cloud provider that runs V340s. It's the same principal and why Sony moved away from having to have custom PS3 servers, so they could jump ship to another provider at any time. There's no gotcha here. Sony will only spin up VMs to needed capacity. Yes at a premium, but because they don't own the servers there's no capital investment and they only spin up what they need as more customers pay to use their service. That's why this model works because, just like Netflix, Sony spins general use servers (That meet their minimum specs) up to run PSNow emulators to meet their customer demand. No need to invest in buying custom hardware.

The reason Amazon isn't going to price Sony out is because they don't need to. Sony's leasing subsidizes the cost of purchasing the high-end servers. Amazon can offer PC games because Sony doesn't. So on Amazon Fire TV Amazon opens a cloud streaming service that runs PC games. These all run on the same servers Sony PSNow do but Amazon uses some of the resources for games who want to play bejeweled and crossy roads. Or maybe Amazon partners with Steam so they have a completely different user base that isn't in direct competition. Just because Sony uses Amazons servers doesn't mean they will immediate compete at all. In fact it's more beneficial for Sony to remain on AWS so the Amazon can subsidize any streaming service with Sony's lease money while running their on service on the servers Sony essentially paid for.

I don't know man. This news of Sony and Verizon kinda points to a split with whomever they are using currently and could be actually be a really good thing for them both.

These next couple years are going be very interesting for us hardcore gaming fans. Not to mention new consoles as well. This is like Christmas as a kid. All the guesses, speculation and wishes. It's just fun. We will see soon.

Wrong with "XBOX games which are NOT BUILT TO RUN ON AMD GPUS" since Xbox One has AMD GPU!!!! Correction: XBOX games which are NOT BUILT TO RUN ON AMD PC GPUS, but Vega PC GPU can easily support Xbox FP10 into FP16, hence bridging API would be needed.

Within GCN instruction set reversion, AMD PC GCNs can support game console shader intrinsics.

Another example,

DirectX12 Feature Level 12_1 ROV feature is needed to speed up 3rd party Xbox 360 emulation i.e. Xbox 360's ROPS has out of order blend functions. X1X's GPU ROPS are customized, but Vega ROPS supports Feature Level 12_1 ROV feature.

Fast X86 CPUs or compute shader can sort ROPS blend layers before sending them to old school ROPS.

My point, XBO games can be made to run on PC hardware but special software bridge is needed for semi-custom differences.

@ronvalencia:

You got me, it was obvious that I meant NVIDA GPUs as that’s exactly what I’ve been saying this whole time. I’ll edit the original thanks for catching that.

Not 100 percent correct on "AWS is the single biggest provider for AMD cloud services"

https://www.amd.com/en/press-releases/amd-collaborates-with-2016oct14

China's Alibaba Cloud has AMD Radeon Pro, but Alibaba has close links with China's Communist Party. Japanese are not insane enough with using CCP linked cloud service.

Phil Spenser already stated MS can bring Xbox 360 BC virtual machine with PowerPC translator software technology to PC but different performance levels on PC can not guarantee uniform performance.

@michaelmikado: We'll just have to agree to disagree on some of these points. Good to know that MS has the Play Anywhere games covered though, along with thousands of third party games. Some of their older exclusives may be a bit more complicated to get going though as you stated.

My final thoughts are this.

One guy says this.

Amazon is not a gaming company. Google isn't. Sony is a gaming company, but they don't have a cloud presence," said Steve Perlman, former CEO of cloud gaming company OnLive. "Then you have Microsoft — Microsoft has both of those things."

Perlman knows the challenges this market presents. He founded OnLive in 2007, and ultimately sold assets to Sony in 2015, a year after Sony announced a game streaming service, PlayStation Now."

"There are only a few companies in the world with the resources to make a game streaming service real at a global scale," the statement said. "Out of those companies, only Microsoft has years of first-hand experience in the key areas that are vital to making this a great experience for gamers: cloud (to support and scale a quality experience), content (whether first-party or not, designing technology with developers to make gaming libraries accessible from anywhere) and community (having built the first-of-its-kind Xbox Live and evolved it over the last 15+ years).

You say this.

but I'll give you some hints. I'm a sys admin who recently moved 2 10000+ plus users to MS cloud services and O365. I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE MS Azure services. I built an entire SaaS model medical software ordering system using 3 different data farms for performance, redundancy, and data recovery. As such I have a good idea of MS's limitations in the space and its strengths. You have ZERO idea what you are talking about. If AWS upped the price, Sony just finds datafarms running the specs they need and spin up VMs on them. That's the point! Sony isn't stuck with AWS by any means at all. The reason it works is because AWS is the single biggest provider for AMD cloud services that Sony needs and the amount Sony spends helps subsidize AWS growth. It's exactly how Netflix works. They just snatch up the local server farm providers that meet their specifications. That's all. They don't need to own their own server farms because it limits your physical location and your reach while increasing you startup capital, cost and maintenance.

One of these guys has intricate knowledge of how game streaming works, and was the CEO of Onlive. The other is a system administrator who has knowledge and hangs out in System Wars.

Don't take any offense if I believe the other guys word over yours.

Good day!

This again... for now the cloud doesn't do much but save files and offload some assets.... by the time it matters, SONY will be right there in the mix.

Virtually any architecture would be able to emulate another architecture provided it has the computational power to both run the software emulation and any software underneath the emulation layer, the problem will always be performance which is what I said from the beginning. The performance levels you would need to emulate PPC and AMD GPUs on would be inconsistent across different games at best and completely unplayable on for some games at worst. It's no different than running an emulator, performance levels vary with hardware and software because the original hardware is being emulated and attempting the run code just as fast as it would on a specific hardware build. Unless the original hardware is 10+ years old you will almost always get better performance running software on a architecture that the software was originally designed to run on.

No Perlman didn't say that. You didn't read the article. Perlman says this:

“Amazon is not a gaming company. Google isn’t. Sony is a gaming company, but they don’t have a cloud presence,” said Steve Perlman, former CEO of cloud gaming company OnLive. “Then you have Microsoft — Microsoft has both of those things.”

At that time, he said, Microsoft was more interested in console sales.

“We had some conversations with them” about cloud gaming, Perlman said. “It just wasn’t a place they wanted to go.”

Today’s world is very different. Microsoft is now “mostly a cloud business,” Perlman said. In addition to its established relationships with gaming companies like Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts and Take Two Interactive, the company has a deep investment in cloud infrastructure.

“At least in theory, I think they could do it,” Perlman said.

Which I one hundred percent agree with. In theory Microsoft is well equipped to become a player in in cloud gaming. No where does Perlman state that Microsoft is even a current player, let alone ahead of Sony. His words were taken completely out of context by those who heard what they wanted to hear and the article itself. You're right, you should listen to Perlman because I 100% agree with him on this point but not others. But don't take my word for it, listen to Perlman like you said.

The blurb you quoted is actually direct marketing speak from Microsoft:

Microsoft said in a statement that it’s best-positioned to develop and deliver this technology.

“There are only a few companies in the world with the resources to make a game streaming service real at a global scale,” the statement said. “Out of those companies, only Microsoft has years of first-hand experience in the key areas that are vital to making this a great experience for gamers: cloud (to support and scale a quality experience), content (whether first-party or not, designing technology with developers to make gaming libraries accessible from anywhere) and community (having built the first-of-its-kind Xbox Live and evolved it over the last 15+ years).”

Which is just Microsoft once again pulling the wool over consumers eyes similar to their "3x the power of an Xbox One" statements from 2013. Just like now, anyone who knows anything about these topics takes pause and says "umm that's not quite right" while the consumers keep falling into Microsoft's marketing trap.......

As for Perlman, he is a brilliant visionary but tends to be over-zealous on future tech and gets muddled in the details of things. I never met him personally but have worked with many who have, and his time at Apple, then with WebTV and selling it to Microsoft for almost half billion dollars in 1997, (Nearly 800 million in today's money), plus his bankrupcy is just many of his before their time implementations he is known for. Again brilliant, but always far ahead of his time. Anyway, I 1000% agree with Perlman, on a technical level Microsoft really has the best chance long term to make cloud gaming happen and it's expected of them. However that's not the position the article takes. It claims Microsoft no only isn't behind in implementation but actually has a big head start. Perlman, doesn't even acknowledge Microsoft as player in that cloud gaming space and neither do I or any real analyst. This article is a fluff piece highlighted by a marketing statement from Microsoft and quotes from an Ex-Microsoft division head taken completely out of context to convince suckers into believing Microsoft is winning a race it hasn't even yet began to run....

To reiterate. Perlman and I agree. Microsoft "could" do it on a technically level, but we both acknowledge they haven't yet and certainly do NOT have a "big head start" as the article suggests. So yes, I highly recommend you listen to what Perlman said and NOT Microsoft marketing speak.

You are totally wrong.

The cloud MS was promoting on 2013 wasn't about streaming games at all.

Their so call cloud was suppose to increase the xbox one POWER which is why people downplayed it,it simply was impossible to stream power to the xbox one over a damn network to make out for the weaker hardware inside the xbox one.

You can't possibly stream power over the net because graphics process requires extremely fast bandwidth which no internet is up to,even the damn PS2 has faster bandwidth than what you can get by internet connection.

Sony is not the leader in cloud COMPUTING and no one is claiming that at all so stop inventing crap,sony is leader in streaming games.

You apparently can't comprehend the difference between running games on remote servers and streaming them and actually handling GPU process over the internet.

What has MS done with its cloud to increase power on xbox one? Yeah nothing they could not it was basically a lie to stop people from buying a PS4 just as DX12 would magically double the xbox one power as well.

Educate yourself streaming games from a cloud which is virtually a video stream with low latency input for controls is not the same as using compute to increase power over the internet which is what MS try to imply and what people debated.

No he doesn't and you don't get it either apparently.

What MS try to sell people with its cloud was totally different to what sony is doing,sony is not in anyway leader in cloud computing,sony is not computing crap with PS Now.

PS Now for PS3 consisted on modify PS3 boards that could house 8 Cell CPU and 8 GPU,each board would act as 8 independent PS3,what sony does is run the game you want to play on their dedicated hardware and actually stream by net a video signal of that game with low latency response for control.

What MS try to sell people on 2013 was actually different MS try to imply that they could actually increase the xbox one POWER by cloud which is basically impossible,to do bandwidth limitations of internet connection even 1GB bandwidth are meh compare with the kind of bandwidth inside the xbox,PS,hell even switch.

In streaming games Sony is the leader no question MS simply is not streaming games right now,and sony has been doing it for years,so yeah in that regard they are way ahead of MS.

On computing no they are not Sony is not running Office 365 or any of that sort,sony is running its games on dedicated hardware and streaming you a video signal.

@michaelmikado said:

@babyjoker1221 said:

@slimdogmilionar said:

Irony is comedy, this thread is hilarious. Rewind to 2013 and all of these cows said cloud was nothing and would never be a reality and even so far as to criticize MS for investing in the cloud.

Fast forward to today and all of a sudden Sony is the leader in cloud computing and has the best cloud infrastructure because they bought not one but two failing game streaming services that didn’t even own the servers they where using, Gaikai and on live where using Amazon and Rackspace servers. There are no dedicated Sony data centers they have to rent servers from companies that will soon be their competition in cloud services. Sony using Amazon servers going forward would be the same as them using MS servers to power PSN, paying your competition to power a service that you guys are actively competing with each other for the top spot. The former owner of onlive said in the source that MS is the only company that has everything needed to make this happen yet fanboys want to disagree and deny this. The price Sony paid for both of those services together is nowhere near 1/4 of the amount the big 3 have invested in their cloud infrastructures over the past decade. Until Sony actually has their own cloud infrastructure they can’t compete with MS, Google, or Amazon. Do you guys really think Amazon would abandon their pursuit of game streaming to fully support Sony while Google and MS keep moving forward? Sony needs global, scalable data centers and currently MS has the most of those and keeps investing billions into Azure.

But I could be wrong but I have to wonder if Sony is so far ahead and already have everything in place where is their equivalent to xcloud? MS is talking about doing this this year with current gen games not Xbox 360 or OG Xbox games. When will Sony announce PSnow game streaming to all devices besides just PS and Pc? Do they even have the resources to do it?

^This guy gets it!!!

We can debate the finer tech points. Some of us can learn a few things, and the points brought up are interesting.

The overall bigger picture presented here by some is absurd though. We can discuss the hurdles MS has when it comes to streaming, and criticize some of their methods used. That's fine, but to argue that Sony has all this infrastructure in place, and is a leader in cloud computing is beyond me. It's like trying to debate which car manufacturer is better Ford or Enterprise. Then explaining how Enterprise is better because of all their infrastructure and such is better. It's honestly LOL worthy.

No nothing is being understood by these posts. This shows a lack of understanding of cloud infrastructure. A better analogy is who is better equipped to make a rental service for cars? Ford because they own the car manufacturing or Enterprise because they have years of experience in the business and can pull from other car manufacturers. In this scenario, Ford has tons of years of experience making cars and selling to rental services. That doesn't mean that because they make the cars, and they don't mark them up, that they immediately have the infrastructure and knowledge to do so. Otherwise Ford would, you know already be renting the cars out themselves...……..

Anyway we can roll all the way back to 2013 if we want to. In 2013, MS promised that Xbox One, despite being less powerful than Sony, had the power of the cloud that made it like having 5x the power of an Xbox One. It's 2019 and anyone who knew anything about what an actual "cloud" consisted of called MS's BS marketing. In 2013 there simply didn't exist Cloud GPU resources for them to even begin to make that claim. As far as Amazon I've already explained how Sony subsidizes their infrastructure investments. Amazon's game service will likely run on the same servers as Sony's. Even the video the OP posted has the guy making the same conclusions about Azure. If you know anything about cloud services then you understand how it works.

But I could be wrong but I have to wonder if Sony is so far ahead and already have everything in place where is their equivalent to xcloud? MS is talking about doing this this year with current gen games not Xbox 360 or OG Xbox games. When will Sony announce PSnow game streaming to all devices besides just PS and Pc? Do they even have the resources to do it?

What are you talking about???? PS3 blades put in data centers in 2014!!!! MS is doing the same exact thing Sony did but 5 years later!!! PSNow plays PS4 games.

PSNow has OVER 275 PS4 games!!! Sony has more than 2x the number of PS4 titles than Microsoft has on its entire Game Pass library right!!! Over 700 games total!!!

PSNow originally ran on everything from Android, Vita, Bravia TVs, etc. YES they obviously had the resources!!! If you actually read the posts you will understand why the change was made, and they were able to reduce the number of supported devices because they literally have had ZERO competition in the market for the past 5 years.

As a matter of fact, seems like Sony is doing fine: https://www.vg247.com/2018/11/10/playstation-now-143-million-lead-earner/

Sony is literally making more money on PSNow than all of the other services combined and that's just 1 yearly quarter or estimated to be over half a Billion dollars from PS now annually. Estimates are that PSnow has between 5-10 million paying subscribers.

According to the SuperData report, game subscription services brought in $273 million during 2018’s third quarter, 52% of which was attributed to PlayStation Now.

Revenue from PS Now totaled $143 million, and EA’s Access services contributed $90 million or 33%.

The differences in percentage for EA services were as follows: EA Access (Xbox One) 16%, Origin Access Premier 9%, Origin Access (PC) 8%.

Xbox Game Pass contributed 15%,or $41 million, to overall subscription revenues during Q3 2018.

I don't think revenue really contributes to how many users there are on the service. HBO before 2014 had more revenue than Netflix, yet Netflix had more users. In this case, Sony makes more money from its users, because of pricing and the lack of frequent promotions that Game Pass brings. Microsoft is playing the Netflix model where they make little revenue at first but more market share and users, whereas Sony may go the route of more revenue, less users and market share, Sony probably can't afford aggressive promotions like $1 Game Pass deals.

Being first means nothing these days, Apple wasn't the first smartphone, they weren't the first company into the tablet market or the first company in the smartwatch market, however they offered good quality products with good user experiences, right now Sony lacks that, we will see if Microsoft and other Cloud giants can do better, (It should be obvious that they will likely be better implementations), but CNBC is absolutely right in this regard, Sony is at the mercy of their competitors.

Being last means even less.

Apple success with the Iphone was a piggy back ride they took on their ipods popularity which was inmmense.

Hahahahaa yes on your biased ass world world sony lack that yet MS has it,MS who only even remotely great exclusive this gen is a racing game and is not even exclusive to begin with.

Yes just like MS billions and size has help them beat Nintendo and sony over the past decade.

People who think MS will all of the sudden beat sony and nintendo are either under pay or simply delusional like yourself,and yes MS is behind sony in the streaming market by miles.

MS has its name in the corporate world and business world. I can consider Amazon and MS as prime competitors in cloud market but Sony stands no where.

Regards,

Adrian Gates

Cloud Expert - CloudDesktopOnline