Even Sony’s CEO knows cloud gaming isn’t there just yet

Although game station By revealing a dedicated streaming device, Sony’s CEO himself knows that cloud gaming still has its limits.

Last week, Sony introduced the rumored Project Q, a device that is all about cloud streaming. Think about something like the Nintendo Switch, except you can’t play it on your TV, all your games can only be streamed via the cloud, and it looks like someone snapped a PS5 controller in half and jammed it. brand tablet. It was a disappointing reveal, mainly because while cloud gaming has made some headway, it’s obviously not there yet, and internet speeds are the biggest barrier for most people. And in a recent interview with the financial times (thank you, CVG), Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida himself expressed that he knows there are still technical difficulties when it comes to cloud gaming.

“I think the cloud itself is an amazing business model, but when it comes to gaming, the technical difficulties are high,” Yoshida said on the subject of latency, that is, the time between pressing a button and the response that happens in the game, and how that is the biggest hurdle to overcome. “So there will be challenges for cloud gaming, but we want to meet those challenges.”

Yoshida also touched on how peak play times throughout the day fluctuate wildly, with a large number of players logging in once they’ve finished working, and how it’s financially inefficient to run when not many players are online. On top of that, a large number of players logging in at once could also cause problems. The CEO referred to that period of the day as “the dark time,” expanding on it by saying, “The dark time for cloud gaming had been a problem for both Microsoft and Google, but it was significant that we were able to use those [quieter] hours for AI learning.

Details on the Project Q are pretty light at the moment, with the main features being an 8-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1080p at 60fps and obviously the main thing being being able to stream your PS5 games wherever you are. Whether it can fill a gap Sony might want in the handheld market remains a big question, though, since the benefit of the Switch and Steam Deck is that it’s not dependent on having a good internet connection. So who knows what the use cases for Project Q will actually be.