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

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"Amazon, Microsoft and Google are in the midst of an intense battle to win business from companies moving their workloads to the cloud. Now, there's brewing competition among them in a very different corner of the cloud market: gaming.

Microsoft has long been a gaming powerhouse, having introduced the Xbox console in 2000. In expanding how and where people can play games, Microsoft said in October that it will start testing a cloud gaming offering this year. Its Project xCloud will work on mobile devices. That announcement followed the acquisition last January of PlayFab, a start-up that provides game developers with cloud-based tools.

Amazon has kept quiet about its ambitions in the market. But The Information reported on Thursday that the company has held conversations with publishers about releasing games on a new service as early as 2020. That project would build on previous effortsto support game developers. Amazon declined to comment on the report.

Google, meanwhile, has started testing a cloud gaming service — under the name Project Stream — with a limited number of users.

It's the latest example of the three massive U.S. infrastructure companies putting their technology to work in a way that lets customers offload their computing and storage needs so they can do more without relying on expensive hardware.

But these companies aren't all equal. And when it comes to gaming, Microsoft has a home-field advantage.

"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).

Are you upset because the Xbox is in last place and has no worthwhile games?

For those of you that think this is just game streaming, you are really behind on cloud computing and what else is going on.

Oh so you only like all positive Playstation News? And attack the truth by a source like CNBC?

Sorry brother Playing on the X and enjoying everything better than you. Too blessed to be stressed.

I will just assume you have an imaginary 2K Pc so lets get that out the way.

All this cloud talk is making me sleepy.

You should check out some of the Tech guys on youtube. It's crazy but interesting if you are into science and tech stuff. I ususally have no idea what they are talking about unless i find a dude like Neil Degrasse Tyson who can break it down for us simpletons. lol. Neil does not do these but there are few dudes I can recommend if you are interested.

Honestly I heard from a dude they will be able to enhance future Xbox consoles and use them as computing power even while powered off for other people and things.(have you heard of the internet of things? MS has been investing heavy into this for years) It's crazy, They could potentially run well over 100 fps!

PS Now is essentially a cloud presence so...

@the-a-baum: lol. All you xbone fannies do is talk about what MS has in the pipeline. Buhhh buuu but it takes years to make games! 2022 will be their year!

Boring, I'll wait for when cloud happens.

Not according to the guy that created it and sold it to them and since they have only invested peanuts. Verizon is their last hope and heard they are already testing PS4 games. PlayStaion will have no exclusives soon if you want to use that tired Xbox argument.

Sooo https://www.gamespot.com/articles/psn-now-has-70m-monthly-active-users-ps-plus-hits-/1100-6450250/

What is MS´s cloud-based service or Amazons and how many active users do they have?

But good try and especially with the computer media powerhouse CNBC who are known for their world-class knowledge about gaming.

@the-a-baum: Not sure what you're talking about.

What about PS Now?

@Jacanuk: Hard to say, but Amazon say they are on pace to make $42 Billion this year just from Cloud services, MS's biggest service is Azure and they broke $100 billion last year as a company.

I hate sales and numbers wars so let's try to stay on topic.

This is more than just streaming games, cloud compute is real and coming. This very well could be the last generation coming up. Just saying Sony is looking very unprepared.

Xbone sucks microsoft isn't competing with anyone

Hmm, so you are talking about their business services.

As I understood it, it´s about gaming and I have never seen an Amazon gaming service similar to PSNOW, nor have I seen a Microsoft gaming service.

Also debating Sony´s presence we have to discuss numbers since so far Sony is the only one on the market who has a dedicated cloud-based gaming service.

@the-a-baum: So you're talking about the need for Sony to up its game in IaaS and PaaS and move towards SaaS.

Sure, I suppose but that would mean potentially no physical media for gaming and that would potentially be a deal breaker for me personally.

As for Sony catching up, I don't see it being a problem for them as they already have a start.

It's not just about Streaming games! I get Sony does that. It's the cloud computing that Azure, Google and Amazon do. These are already monetized and making billions on their own and they are all coming to gaming. Sony is so late to the party it is not funny.

Imagine you have an Xbox S that can do 4K 60fps thanks to the cloud. Not necessarily the S but they are making things like this happen. Your box does certain things and cloud kicks into to upscale even more. This is not secret sauce anymore, it's happening. Bury your heads in the sand for all i care, you will see soon and Sony will be left in the dust if they dont find a good cloud partner, and I hope they do.

You never heard of Xbox Live or GamePass? You even game bro?

No surprises here... Sony might be well placed atm as things are now, but heading into the future things don't look as rosy for them compared to the competition when it comes to service-based stuff like this.

Cloud gaming would not be exclusive/unique to any particular company. Gamers will have a variety of options to play the same games.

They have not innovated Jack shit and Jack left last generation. Nor have they done anything pro consumer. They are in for a world of hurt when the worm turns since all they do is copy and paste. They are "Accident Champs" this gen an they are finally going to have to work for one next Gen.

Some people are desperately hoping that Sony fails... I can only laugh at people that needs this to be happy.

Do you understand the term Cloud based? Also do you even understand what Onlive was? or PsNOw is?

Having access to a game which you can download and install, is not a cloud-based gaming service.

You are so wrong on this! Sony Fantards are the ones whom hope Xbox fails and goes away. Most Xbox fans besides some of the toxic ones don't want Sony to go anywhere, and love the competition and one ups on each other. It benefits us all.

@the-a-baum: you're wrong. There are toxic people and people wanting the other to fail on both sides.

That said, from what Ive seen the Sony fans mostly troll and the Xbox fans are reactive, bitter and angry.

That's what you get when your happiness depends on your console of choice success. I'm glad I don't have this problem.

With a 2 day old account. LMAO.

You Alts are hilarious.

Yes it crap and inferior yet Sony sold it as a premium Service. And PSNow is doing Downloads (once again copying Xbox) because people complained how bad it was so what is your point?

Again Xcloud and what the other big 2 do is Cloud Computing! It is not just about streaming in all cases.

Just wait until E3, oh wait sorry lol!

@Pedro: my thread about games recommendations are filled with bitter Xbox fans, debating if I'm an alt and whatnot, you don't need to be here a long time to see this, it's obvious in numerous threads and posts.

Scrolling the first page is enough to notice this pattern.

Still pretending I see. Why do people like you create Alt accounts? Are you dodge banning?

Cloud is still not there. The people are forgetting cloud might be in their own country but not in others. This is sales not to be had. So boxes will still be made for country not outfitted for cloud stream.

So if box is available AND stream service both are available in your land, do you choose box console or stream setup. This is where consumer choice come to play.

@Pedro: this is completely unrelated to the thread and the forum's rules say you shouldn't deviate from it. If you want to talk about the thread subject, if not, I'm not going to reply to you.

They have actually been doing this for chess for quite awhile, you can check out a program called LCZero where people have been sharing their computer resources to improve the ability of this specific engine to play chess

Last I checked the following doesn't relate to the thread

They don't need their own cloud; there are plenty of businesses like Facebook, Netflix etc that don't have one either.

A better solution would be to use all of the big 3 cloud services. Not to mention you still need to implement code.

PSNow may offer download of games but it still not it´s the main purpose, the purpose is streaming of games to a device. IE Cloud-based gaming, the same thing Google is doing on a trial basis.

Microsoft and Amazon both do not have any similar service, Xbox live/gamepass is not a cloud based service and does not compare to PSNOW.

But don´t worry i know your main goal for the thread so I will let you get back to your sony bashing.

@the-a-baum: Yep, the next 10 years are going to be very different for Sony than the last 10 I expect. Time will tell.

Heh. Until any real use-case scenario for this cloud bullshit actually carries any kind of water in actual games, it seems like a bunch of four year olds banging pots and pans with spoons in a neighbors backyard. Honestly, we've been waiting for this mysterious "Cloud Power" since Crackdown 3 was announced and even that isn't blowing anyones minds in the here and now. People really should just stop hyping and bandwagoning a buzzword for no odd goddamn reason. Ya'll gonna be like "WE HAVE THE CLOUD" in 2023 and no one is still going to know what you mean let alone give a flying crap.

Even worse, when someone does manage to do anything worth noting with it, a publisher is just going to use Amazon's or any number of other cloud services to stay third party and sell games on whatever platform is the most popular (All bets being a Playstation, because hey, that's what happens). You're going to have "teh cloud" for all of like a hand full of games and then everyone else will be doing it, anyways. Welcome to the real world.

PS4 people treat Xbox like shit, and prod Xbox people, and then cry about Xbox people who don't take kindly to haters. If any Xbox gamer is bitter, they have a reason for it, could name several reasons why.

You have the PS4 the best machine so says everyone, why would any ps4 fanboy need to go around carrying about console wars.

I personally never quote anyone ins system wars cause I don't take this place serious, its not like Twiter or Reddit where what you say actually matters. So if guaging a group by what they say here, maybe should reconsider what a Xbox fan is, cause if all you read is when they vent, of course if an entitled ps4 fanboy you wouldn't get it.

Looks like someone conveniently forgot about PS Now...

@subspecies: PSNow isn't really a cloud presence, its relying on third parties to achieve a quite bad outcome. To be a real competitor at scale, you need billions of investment in servers.

Microsoft is a software company, it would be irresponsible if they DIDNT have made the shift a long time ago.

Sony is a hardware company, it would be extremely risky for them to develop a cloud infrastructure on their own.

That said, they could always acquire a cloud-based startup and solve the problem.............which im sure they will.

I don't think buying a cloud startup isn't going make up the lack of servers around the globe. Like they say you can't buy your way into the cloud market.

Cows bringing up PSNow are only shooting themselves in the foot. The service is garbage.

Is the cloud going to save Xbox again like they wanted people to believe at the start of this gen? Lol

@vfighter: This is Microsoft playing smart and leveraging their Azure platform, Xbox platform into a market that will increasingly become a large market, while at the same time, having casuals moving away from consoles and PCs.