The recent announcement of Microsoft and Sony collaborating for cloud gaming definitely came as a surprise for gamers worldwide. However, the news of the two rivals working together seems to have taken Sony’s own PlayStation team by surprise. As per a Bloomberg report, Sony is said to have begun the negotiations regarding two company’s team up in 2018 and it was apparently being handled by Sony’s senior management in Tokyo and the PlayStation team wasn’t aware of the development. Citing people close to the development, the report states that “Staff at the gaming division were caught off-guard by the news. Managers had to calm workers and assure them that plans for the company’s next-generation console weren’t affected.”
If what the report states are true, then it is possible that the PlayStation team received the news of the collaboration at the same time everyone else did. Microsoft issued a statement that reads, “Under the memorandum of understanding signed by the parties, the two companies will explore joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services. In addition, the two companies will explore the use of current Microsoft Azure datacenter-based solutions for Sony’s game and content-streaming services. By working together, the companies aim to deliver more enhanced entertainment experiences for their worldwide customers. These efforts will also include building better development platforms for the content creator community.”
While there are no details of the service the two companies will leverage from each other, it is most likely that Sony is banking on Microsoft’s Azure platform to get a foothold for its game streaming service. This comes after Google decided to enter the game streaming space with Stadia, which is said to enable game streaming on any device with a good internet connection. The company had given quite an impressive demo and you can read all the details about Google’s cloud gaming solution called Stadia here