Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a video game platform that lets you play games with the press of a button, no need for discs or downloads. Tap on a YouTube ad for a game, and you’re instantly playing in your web browser. Experience the latest and greatest games on your ancient laptop, phone, or tablet, thanks to remote servers instead of having to buy a console or build a powerful gaming PC. Fire up a game on the TV, then seamlessly pick it up on your mobile device. Stuck in a game? Ask a friend to take over your controller from across the internet.
If that sounds like the lofty pitch for Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service, you’ve been paying attention. But every single one of those things was promised years ago by a startup named Gaikai — a startup that Sony bought in 2012 for $380 million. At the time, Sony gave every indication that it would harness the full potential of a PlayStation cloud. It even bought Gaikai’s closest competitor, OnLive, in 2015 and launched a service called PlayStation Now that finally hit 1 million subscribers this October. But half a decade later, the company has barely tapped into cloud gaming’s promise, and competitors like Google seem poised to attract the gamers that Sony failed to convert.
I doubt it’s a coincidence that Google and Gaikai’s pitches sound so similar. As Gaikai co-founder, CEO, and former PlayStation Now chief David Perry pointed out to me in an interview on the day Stadia debuted, Google gaming boss Phil Harrison used to sit on Gaikai’s advisory board. Jack Buser, Stadia’s head of business development, used to run Sony’s PlayStation Now. Heck, a clean-shaven Sundar Pichai was the one who first introduced how Gaikai could stream games natively in the Chrome web browser, three years before he became Google’s CEO.
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