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Gotta admit I didn’t see this one coming in a million years. Sony and Microsoft have buried the hatchet and are working together on the next generation of cloud gaming services. Those future services for game and content-streaming services will be running on Microsoft’s Azure tech.
The partnership was revealed yesterday, with a header image that any 90’s kid never thought would happen, the CEO’s of Sony and Microsoft shaking hands. This just shows how different both the Sony Corp and Microsoft of today is, under the new leadership of Kenichiro Yoshida, President, and CEO of Sony Corporation, and Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft,
The partnership seems to say that Sony will be moving all of its game and content streaming to the Azure cloud, where Microsoft already has its Project xCloud.
By collaborating in this way, the real winner is the millions of console gamers. With more content streamed every day, stable delivery platforms like this are a necessity.
Does this mean that the Gaikai tech that Sony was using to run the PSNow game-streaming service wasn’t up to the task of the next-gen of gaming? Maybe, or it could just be that Sony doesn’t want to spend loads of cash to create its own network when Microsoft already has an established platform. I mean, it makes perfect sense.
The partnership doesn’t stop just with gaming – the two companies will also be collaborating on semiconductor and AI development. Sony brings class-leading image sensors to the table, which Microsoft no doubt wants for its HoloLens mixed-reality headsets.
Sony likely wants the Azure AI tech to improve on the post-processing from its image sensors, similar to the computational photography of Google’s Pixel range. Will a new Kinect be on the cards, powered by Azure AI? Who knows, but we’re guessing we’ll find out more soon down the line.
The real question on everyone’s lips should be: Does this mean we’ll see Xbox/PlayStation cross-play in the future? Hey, at this point, anything is possible.
Do you think this partnership can work? Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
Editors’ Recommendations:
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- Sony’s PlayStation 5, or whatever it’s called, is at least a year away still
- Sony restricts sexual content to make people happy, makes people unhappy
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