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Sony and Microsoft to explore strategic partnership regarding cloud-based tech for gaming & AI

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gofreak

gofreak

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Oct 26, 2017
7,842
nekkid said:
Is interesting that they decided this was a better solution than the one they've been investing in for years.

So is this just cloud streaming or will they be hosting PSN as well?
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Seemingly cloud game streaming, and media streaming (movies/music/tv).

General PSN services could be on the table, but I guess it depends how much lock-in Sony has with AWS. A lot of PSN is engineered on AWS. But maybe some new stuff could could be built out on Azure instead.
 
riotous

riotous

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Oct 25, 2017
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Bus-TEE said:
So five years from now we'll have the Playstation X?

Sony will build the controllers and the hardware (if any were needed) while MS will provide the servers and platform to run the streaming solution.

Why have two competing 'Netflix for games' platforms in the face of competition from Google and (potentially) Amazon when Sony and MS can join forces.

Makes sense to me.
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Probably not; there's no reason to make this assumption.

Xbox is MS's most popular consumer brand (despite losing good will this gen) by far. Nothing they sell sells devices in the 10s of millions.

There's a really good chance you wouldn't even notice this partnership as a consumer; this is behind the scenes tech while the 2 products are still competitors.

Think of this as a deal that Sony is making with Microsoft, and imagine Xbox is a different company with the same deal with MS.

It's like assuming we'll have only 1 console because they both use AMD inside.
 
jroc74

jroc74

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Oct 27, 2017
29,472
Window said:
Right? So many were saying Sony was not at a disadvantage in the new streaming world at all and using PSNow as an example. I never understood it.
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Because the have an actual working service? And have been thru the growing pains of streaming games and remote play. Or that doesn't matter....

It's like Comcast vs RCN. Or Netflix vs Amazon Prime.

Using the behind the scenes stuff doesn't negate the stuff we as consumers use.

Until MS gets their streaming service up n running, they will behind Sony. Because their service isn't up n running....

Ppl thought the exact same thing about their smartphone business...

But yeah....I see this is just more fuel for console wars....
 

Deleted member 12635

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A scenario it could look like in the future ...

l4vSPVz.png
 

LCGeek

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Oct 28, 2017
5,906
tutomos said:
Stadia is dead on arrival. When Tequila Works is one of the main presenters for your reveal conference, you know you have a lot of work to do.
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If that all your basic reasoning on it being DOA on you're wrong.

Based on what you said not a single console maker with a bad showing in the last decade should've had the success they did.
 
Bus-TEE

Bus-TEE

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Nov 20, 2017
4,656
riotous said:
Probably not; there's no reason to make this assumption.

Xbox is MS's most popular consumer brand (despite losing good will this gen) by far. Nothing they sell sells devices in the 10s of millions.

There's a really good chance you wouldn't even notice this partnership as a consumer; this is behind the scenes tech while the 2 products are still competitors.

Think of this as a deal that Sony is making with Microsoft, and imagine Xbox is a different company with the same deal with MS.

It's like assuming we'll have only 1 console because they both use AMD inside.
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It doesn't make sense now but in five to ten years when Google and Amazon are breathing down their necks it might.

The problem with the console biz is 'resets' every generation meaning you can't count on success carrying over to your next platform.

I can totally see a scenario where they work together on a platform that could have both the PS and Xbox branding as part of t's DNA.
 
DopeyFish

DopeyFish

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Oct 25, 2017
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Colbert said:
A scenario it could look like in the future ...

GJSGSeW.png
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yeah

the thing is MS took the hit a decade ago when shutting down original XBL

I think MS is going to try to get PSN/PSNow running in azure as it says in their release "existing game and content streaming services" so I think they're trying to avoid that huge execution that MS did with OG XBL
 

Fredrik

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Oct 27, 2017
9,003
Bus-TEE said:
So five years from now we'll have the Playstation X?

Sony will build the controllers and the hardware (if any were needed) while MS will provide the servers and platform to run the streaming solution.

Why have two competing 'Netflix for games' platforms in the face of competition from Google and (potentially) Amazon when Sony and MS can join forces.

Makes sense to me.
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That might take awhile. We still don't have one "Netflix for TV shows and movies", quite the opposite, that market has exploded.
But I most definitely wish for that future to happen!
 
Judge

Judge

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Oct 25, 2017
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Sony going to be directly funding new MS studio acquisitions!
 
Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins

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Feb 10, 2018
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c0de said:
Finally no discussions anymore how Sony can do Psnow at scale while not being Microsoft, Google or Amazon. They had to partner in the end. Operating cloud tech is something you should leave to the companies who do it right already. It's only interesting why they didn't choose aws for this but Azure - perhaps we will know some day.
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To be fair Sony going with Azure, does prove there point.
Its rather ironic really.
 
riotous

riotous

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Bus-TEE said:
The problem with the console biz is 'resets' every generation meaning you can't count on success carrying over to your next platform.
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Which is why MS focuses so much on subscription services; but the selling of those services is greatly enhanced by having branded hardware.

Sony using MS's backend isn't suddenly going to make them want GamePass on PS6's; we'll just have to see but I seriously doubt this represents the end of their console "war" looking.
 
upinsmoke

upinsmoke

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Oct 26, 2017
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Surprising news but if Sony wants to keep up in the cloud based gaming arena then they obviously thought this was the right move. It's also important to just not go over the top here. A while back Satya said MS wants to get back to being the go to for other companies, the backbone for them, so not necessarily putting themselves at the forefront or in the limelight so to speak but be that strong network support infrastructure. This seems pretty much to fall in line with that
 
vivftp

vivftp

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Oct 29, 2017
19,994
Beer Monkey said:
If PS5 and Scarlett architectures are as similar as Xbox One and PS4, it makes sense to develop a single blade that can stream both (and X1 games, and PS4 games).

Blades designed around a single platform for a single vendor don't make sense from a scalability perspective.

PS3 either gets dropped, or emulated. I don't see dedicated Cell blades coming to Azure. PS1 and PS2 can be emulated right now, and far better than how Sony does PS2.
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There is zero reason to believe that Xbox and PlayStation will be sharing blades for their games. There's every reason to believe they will be using their own segregated blades all on Azure. And the ball and chain that is Cell architecture is why I believe the PS5 will be fully BC so they can run everything on a unified platform.
 
Rex1157

Rex1157

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Nov 22, 2017
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Fredrik said:
There will still be competition. PS and Xbox should totally be merged, they're too similar, there is a bigger difference between two PCs with AMD and nvidia GPU, the biggest difference between Xbox and Playstation right now is the stick placement :P
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I disagree, similar hardware doesn't mean they need to stop making different hardware platforms and share all of their games with eachother.
 
Garrett 2U

Garrett 2U

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Oct 25, 2017
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I predict we are heading towards a future with one variation of console hardware. Longterm, it doesn't make sense for Azure to have three different variations of server blades (Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo), refreshing every five years.

Of course, that doesn't mean there won't be three different services operating on the same backend.
 
RdN

RdN

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Oct 31, 2017
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Only blind fanboys didn't see the huge disadvantage that Sony had going into the next generation of video games compared to Microsoft/Azure and Google/StadiaCloud.

With this move, Sony fixes that, using one of the best Cloud solutions that is available worldwide, and Microsoft get a huge customer.

Win win for both companies.
 
edo_kid

edo_kid

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Oct 27, 2017
11,099
Wow Azure is a beast right now and it's getting bigger and bigger. They must be like the second biggest money maker at Microsoft right now.
 
tomofthepops

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Oct 27, 2017
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It was obvious that Sony needed to partner with someone for better cloud gaming but I assumed it would be Amazon.
 

Bundy

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Oct 27, 2017
20,931
Anthony Hopkins said:
You have not been in the next gen speculation thread then.

Theres been many talk there of how much of a battle it has been between Sony + ms trying to outdo each other in hardware performance.

This new deal kinda puts the breaks on that theory.
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I've been in the next-gen speculation thread too often.... Sony doesn't know the Anaconda specs, MS doesn't know the PS5 specs.
 
Beer Monkey

Beer Monkey

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Oct 30, 2017
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vivftp said:
There is zero reason to believe that Xbox and PlayStation will be sharing blades for their games. There's every reason to believe they will be using their own segregated blades all on Azure. And the ball and chain that is Cell architecture is why I believe the PS5 will be fully BC so they can run everything on a unified platform.
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Nope my bet is the blades will likely roll off the same production line and will act like chameleons by using FPGA to dynamically redefine circuits to account for silicon differences. Feel free to bookmark this post to ridicule me later.
 
MXT

MXT

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May 13, 2019
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The cloud future waits for no one. Going to be weird when Sony builds the cloud-only, hardware-optional PlayStation of the future on Microsoft tech. Going to be hard to compete on price with Microsoft.
 
Garrett 2U

Garrett 2U

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Oct 25, 2017
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"In addition, the two companies will explore the use of current Microsoft Azure datacenter-based solutions for Sony's game and content-streaming services."

The "current Microsoft Azure datacenter-based solution" for game streaming is XCloud. So swap that in, and this sentence becomes a lot more interesting:

"In addition, the two companies will explore the use of XCloud for Sony's game and content-streaming services."

Hmm... I hope we hear more at E3.
 
MXT

MXT

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May 13, 2019
646
vivftp said:
There is zero reason to believe that Xbox and PlayStation will be sharing blades for their games. There's every reason to believe they will be using their own segregated blades all on Azure. And the ball and chain that is Cell architecture is why I believe the PS5 will be fully BC so they can run everything on a unified platform.
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'Full' BC, as in non-emulator based backwards compatibility for PS3 games on the PS5 will not be a thing. Best case scenario is a very good emulator.

Sony has learned the lesson with the PS3; the costs you pay in adding hardware for BC purposes makes competing on price impossible.

Both MS and Sony will get BC with current gen games 'for free', but going beyond current gen means emulation.
 
FSavage

FSavage

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Oct 30, 2017
562
gofreak said:
Seemingly cloud game streaming, and media streaming (movies/music/tv).

General PSN services could be on the table, but I guess it depends how much lock-in Sony has with AWS. A lot of PSN is engineered on AWS. But maybe some new stuff could could be built out on Azure instead.
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You forget that Sony has been working on upgrading their PSN backend for a long while now (name changes being one of the results of that). I would imagine that transitioning PSN from AWS to Azure will be much easier than we think.

I'm sure that this deal isn't exactly new and that both companies have been working towards it for a while now.
 
Garrett 2U

Garrett 2U

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Oct 25, 2017
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vivftp said:
There is zero reason to believe that Xbox and PlayStation will be sharing blades for their games. There's every reason to believe they will be using their own segregated blades all on Azure. And the ball and chain that is Cell architecture is why I believe the PS5 will be fully BC so they can run everything on a unified platform.
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I mean, it kind of says they will in the press release:

"In addition, the two companies will explore the use of current Microsoft Azure datacenter-based solutions for Sony's game and content-streaming services."
 
Rosebud

Rosebud

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Apr 16, 2018
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That's kinda cute tbh. I thought they would use Amazon.

Maybe now PS Now can finally expand to my country.
 
M4xim1l1ano

M4xim1l1ano

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Oct 29, 2017
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Santiago, Stockholm, Vienna
Just some thoughts here..

Sony most likely did an evaluation on the different cloud providers based on different criterias. And even though MS is a competitor, they still wanted to use their tech instead of Amazon/Google..

That should say something about Azure. When even a direct competitor wants to user your tech, that means something.

On the other hand we see these things in other markets such as smartphones etc.
 
HardRojo

HardRojo

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Oct 25, 2017
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Calverz said:
Yea it was a joke. Just like xbox games on ps5
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Ah, so you were kind of annoyed by my rather serious post. Microsoft has shown they're willing to go beyond being bound by their own box, their games are already on PC and they helped make Cuphead on Switch happen. So no, it wasn't a joke, it's a possibility based on what we're seeing.
 
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