Sony has given PS4 players a timeframe of when to expect the Gaikai streaming service.
One of the many new features touted by Sony during the lead-up to the PlayStation 4’s launch was their partnership with the Japanese Gaikai streaming service which would allow PS4 players to play older non-PS4 PlayStation titles through the magic of cloud-based streaming. Now, Sony has given players a slightly more narrow timeframe of when they can expect Gaikai to launch.
According to Andrew House, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony is planning to have Gaikai completely up and running in North America by the tail end of 2014 (third quarter to be exact) with other international territories getting it in early 2015. House also confirmed that Sony is planning to make Gaikai compatible with the PlayStation Vita as well:
"Our goal is to be able to have a new form of game distribution streamed from the server side, initially to PS4 consoles then gradually moving that out to Vita."
Sadly, House couldn’t elaborate on how exactly players will acquire the licenses for earlier titles to play via Gaikai. Specifically, whether there’d be some way if a PS4 player could have their PS4 console “detect” that they already owned a copy of a certain older game, either physically or digitally, and therefore wouldn’t have to re-buy the game in order to play it through Gaikai.
We’ll have to wait a little while to find out just how exactly Gaikai will work but it’s nice to se Sony is still committed to giving PS4 players access to older console libraries.
