When Sony celebrated the PS4’s launch in North America, they made sure to mention that Gaikai was scheduled to release “in 2014“, but failed to mention anything about timing for Canada or Europe.
Citing “trusted sources”, Eurogamer has heard that Gaikai will fully launch in North America during Q3 2014, with Europe receiving it in 2015. As well, they have heard from developers that a beta test will begin in early 2014, which fits in line with what Andrew House said about possibly operating Gaikai “as a beta test” in the beginning.
As part of an interview by Eurogamer this week, Andrew House confirmed a 2014 release date in the US for Gaikai is still on track:
We’re on track to have a commercial service up and running in the US first within 2014. That remains the plan and we’re very much on track to reach that.
But what’s important is to understand the full scope of what we’re trying to achieve and why we felt the Gaikai acquisition was important. Our goal is to be able to have a new form of game distribution streamed from the server side, initially to PS4 consoles then gradually moving that out to Vita.
But eventually, the endgame is to have this available on a multitude of network-connected devices, essentially delivering a console-quality gaming experience on devices which are not innately capable of doing that.
We think there’s a great opportunity to broaden the market, because you essentially remove the need to make the console purchase in order to have access to that experience. It may sound counter-intuitive, because, aren’t you replacing a business that is your bread and butter? But part of being an innovative company is being a pioneer in new forms of distribution of content, and we would like to be there first and take a leadership role.
House then answered whether the 2015 release date rumor in Europe had any truth to it:
I really can’t be specific on the European roll-out. It’s a brand new form of delivery. We need to prove out the technology, which we feel is good at its core, but we place – as I think is quite right – a real emphasis on delivering a quality experience for consumers. And that will be dependent to a degree on what the strength of broadband connection is going to be, and what our server deployment and infrastructure looks like.
We’re hard at work on all of those fronts, but I’m not at a point right now where I can be specific about when our European fans are going to be able to enjoy that.
How would you feel if Gaikai didn’t arrive in North America until the second half of 2014, or 2015 in Europe? Let us know in the comments below.
