Future perfect

Earlier this year, Sony unveiled PlayStation Now, a service that will let users stream older games on their PS4s and Vitas. It has the potential to either be an insider’s fan club, rarely used and rarely useful, or the catalyst for a global change in the way videogames are played and consumed and discussed. Ball’s in your court, Sony.

But let’s back up and take a look at where this came from. A startup called Gaikai was founded in 2008 that, by 2010, was doing demos of streaming videogames. By 2011, this streaming was happening in browsers, and by 2012 the service was out of beta, with players able to stream games via the Gaikai website or even Facebook. It didn’t matter how powerful your computer was, you could play brand-new games without installing them on your machine. In July 2012, Sony bought Gaikai for $380 million. Speculation ensued.

On February 2013, at the PlayStation 4 event in New York, people got some answers. Gaikai’s cloud technology would allow you to stream the video of whatever game you were playing to your friends. Your friends could even take control if you got stuck at a certain part. And then Sony noted the PS4′s lack of backwards-compatibility and that Gaikai’s streaming could allow you to play old PlayStation games on the PS4. More details were to come. Speculation continued.

Read the full article at Kill Screen.