Sony wants to improve cloud gaming, but admits the tech is tricky

PS5 face plates

Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has expressed much interest in growing cloud gaming on PS5 and future hardware.

While Sony has arguably been a slow starter in the cloud gaming race, at least on PS5, Yoshida recognized it as "an amazing business model" in an interview with the Financial Times. However, he seemed keenly aware of the hurdles involved in such relatively young tech.

Yoshida recognized latency (controller input delay inherent to an online connection) as the key difficulty to overcome. "I think cloud itself is an amazing business model, but when it comes to games, the technical difficulties are high," he said.

"So there will be challenges to cloud gaming, but we want to take on those challenges." (via VGC)

(Image credit: Sony)

It's true that Sony got the cloud gaming ball rolling early with PlayStation Now, a paid service that allowed players to stream games to their console with no downloads required. It wasn't the most reliable service back in the day, with frequent disconnects and rampant input delay being a problem with even moderately quick internet speeds.

PlayStation Now has since been rolled into PS Plus, with game streaming an optional alternative to downloads. However, PS3 games on the service still only have cloud streaming as the only available option. Overall, though, Sony's streaming solution has improved since its earliest days, though still can't quite hold a candle to playing the best PS5 games natively on the system.

So far, only Xbox Cloud Gaming has been able to present a competent game streaming solution in the console space, but as it's only available as part of an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, the cost of entry is quite high. Sony may want to look at a more affordable solution if it's interested in growing the appeal of cloud gaming.

It likely won't do so with the recently announced Project Q handheld. Designed with PS Remote Play in mind, the 1080p60-capable display of the device likely won't mesh well with cloud-streamed titles. Largely because remote play already has its own issues with input delay.