Sony Explains Microsoft Partnership, Hints At New Subscription For PlayStation Now

Over the last few days we have discussed a lot about the partnership just signed between Microsoft and Sony on streaming.

Over the last few days, we have discussed a lot about the partnership signed between Microsoft and Sony on streaming.

Now that Sony has had the usual earnings call with investors and analysts, we have more details about the reasons behind this agreement.

CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has detailed that, after being for over five years in the business, the company has found streaming more and more challenging, and this is the main reason why it has tried and asked help to external partners.

Latency, in particular, has been an issue that the platform owner hasn’t managed to fix properly, and led to start such discussions.

“We’ve been working with streaming services over the last five years, and there are various difficult aspects. The latency of the network for one. Some examples I could cite, for instance, the typical means of minimising latency is the placement of servers on the edge closer to users – but moving servers closer to one group of users can mean increasing latency for another group of users,” said Yoshida.

“And also, there will be an encoding process at the very end, and how we can minimise the time for compression is another challenge.”

He claimed that there is not a fixed timeline for when Microsoft Azure will truly become the technology behind PlayStation Now, on top of that, and hinted at the possibility that a new business model could be implemented, as the subscription covers short titles and games that require “50 hours or 100 hours” to complete.

“And also, in order to make it a viable business, what would be the business model? Our service is a subscription model now, but depending on the game…one game could be played for 50 hours or 100 hours, and for someone playing one game like this, what is the advantage of a subscription service per month, the all-you-can-play type of model?,” Yoshida said.

Finally, he revealed that discussions would be held by Sony’s Katsumoto, SVP, Officer in charge of R&D, as “we would like to proceed through collaboration” with Microsoft.