Sony's Deal With Microsoft Blindsided Its Own PlayStation Team

When Sony unveiled a cloud gaming pact with archrival Microsoft, it surprised the industry. From a report: Perhaps no one was more shocked than employees of Sony's PlayStation division, who have spent almost two decades fighting the U.S. software giant in the $38 billion video game console market. Last week, the companies announced a strategic partnership to co-develop game streaming technology and host some of PlayStation's online services on the Redmond-based company's Azure cloud platform. It comes after PlayStation spent seven years developing its own cloud gaming offering, with limited success. Negotiations with Microsoft began last year and were handled directly by Sony's senior management in Tokyo, largely without the involvement of the PlayStation unit, according to people familiar with the matter. Staff at the gaming division were caught off-guard by the news. Managers had to calm workers and assure them that plans for the company's next-generation console weren't affected, said the people, asking not to be identified discussing private matters.

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[unixisc]

Azure is a Linux based cloud service, so all those Telemetry claims don't apply here

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[chispito]

PlayStation 5, now running Windows 10 S with 16-color Apps(r) and built-in Telemetry(r)!

It's a streaming games service. You would be logging into remote systems where the game is then run. What additional telemetry could you possibly add?

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[UnknowingFool]

How about installing spyware that reports on everything you do when you are not online gaming. Watching YouTube or Netflix? MS would like to know.

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[Etcetera]

Streaming is going through Azure; there's no evidence Sony is moving its regular PSN network off of Amazon. And either way, I'm certain Sony would be keeping that data proprietary.

Microsoft Azure (or Amazon for that matter) is free to spy on the data coming across for competitive purposes, but Sony would sue them in a heartbeat if that came out.

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[Anonymous Coward]

there's no evidence Sony is moving its regular PSN network off of Amazon

They already have, at least partially. But not to Azure.

I worked at Sony San Diego Studio when we started experimenting with putting backend systems on AWS. Prior to that, it was all in-house on dedicated servers, and with the release of new games, they either had piles of unused servers, or were scrambling to source servers stat, when a game turned out to be either a wild success or a flop. MLB The Show and Mod Nation Racers were the f

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[alvinrod]

The problem is ultimately self-correcting as long as new businesses are free join the market and compete. When investors look at what to fund, they're much more attracted to areas of great potential profit. There's a reason that so many other companies are trying to emulate Apple in the smartphone market.

I think streaming is a pretty useless approach to gaming anyway so I'm not even worried about someone trying to monopolize that part of the market. I'm quite content running the game on my own PC. The re

roadkill reflects on the laissez-faire long view

[epine]

The problem is ultimately self-correcting as long as new businesses are free join the market and compete.

Yes, but the back side of exactly the same billboard reads: 1 billion oxen gored.

My own ox among them, in an era where Microsoft was responsible for IE 5/6, VB6, and a C++ compiler that ticked all of the shiny-new compatibility boxes, but failed brutally if you tried to nest any of the advanced constructs to more than one or two levels (flagrantly and egregiously engaging in tickmark-driven shortest-path

game streaming can end up like cable in bad way

[Joe_Dragon]

game streaming can end up like cable

With

big bundles

exclusives

Fee fights

region lock

cancon

games that expire

fees for things like
HD
4K
storage space
multi games at the same time

Large companies have complex relationships

[jellomizer]

We can see this with Apple and Samsung, Microsoft and Sony, Apple and Microsoft, Sony and Samsung....

When we have big companies, especially ones with a lot of influence, your biggest rival, is probably the one company with a particular product, part, patent or service that you need to get. So Sony needs Microsoft Cloud services, so they have additional power to compete against the XBox. Microsoft Cloud services division isn't going to turn down a big customer like Sony, even if it is going to make them mo

Costs rising faster than revenues?

[QuietLagoon]

What usually pushes a company like Sony to make a deal with a competitor like Microsoft is a cost structure in which the costs are rising faster than the revenue. Drastic measures need to be done in order continue returning an appropriate stream of money (whether dividends or unrealized gains) to the shareholders.

Re: Costs rising faster than revenues?

[tysonedwards]

Or, spooked by Googleâ(TM)s Stadia and trying to play catch up by getting preferred rates by buying a bunch of Azure Reserved Instances to grow PlayStation Now.

Re:Costs rising faster than revenues?

[KingMotley]

Or sony realizes that they aren't in the cloud business, and the playstation division would be better served if they focused on making a better platform than worrying about the infrastructure of a cloud.

The alternative would be for them to invest in creating a massive cloud infrastructure themselves and all that goes with it. That means dozens of datacenters around the world, working with all the different telecommunications companies to improve response rates, high speed/low latency connectivity between them, designing and maintaining redundancy, etc etc. That's an awful lot of capital to invest for a gaming platform.

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[leonbev]

You would think that they would go with Google Cloud or AWS, though, instead of funding their primary competition with millions of dollars in cloud hosting revenue.

Surprised?

[gTsiros]

You shouldn't be.

Calm your tits, interweb

[loserhead]

What this article does NOT say: -There are winners and losers in this arrangement -Next-Gen console development will be affected In case you didn't RTFA, this deal between two faceless mega-corporations is about Micro$oft's superior cloud computing capabilities. Sony has contracted their apparent rival to bear that burden, thereby releasing themselves from the pressures of competition. This is a prudent operational decision on Sony's part which is being spun as some sort of failure or coup.

It gets even worse!

[XxtraLarGe]

In Major Blow To Sony's Upcoming PlayStation 5, Microsoft Announces PlayStation 6 [theonion.com]

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[hraponssi]

Well, reading the article headline, I did think that someone had blindsided Microsoft's Playstation team..

Video game industry jumps the shark?

[sound+vision]

To me, this is (another) sign that the gaming industry is broken. Competition is becoming less important, now comes the phase where consolidations happen to squeeze every last cent from as broad an array of people as possible. Whatever comes from this Sony-MS partnership, there's one thing it will absolutely have, regardless of anything else: A recurring charge on your credit card.

PS5 cloud feature

[sad_]

Aha! now we know that a very large team is working on something 'cloud' for the PS5.