Looking good together

After last year's acquisition of Gaikai, many have been wondering just how prominent the game streaming company and its technology would be for PlayStation 4. The answer was given during the console's big announcement event this evening, and it became clear that the company is delivering expertise and infrastructure vital to the system's functionality.

Gaikai founder David Perry took to the stage and confirmed the widely spread rumour that the 'PlayStation Cloud' will be used to stream previous generation games to give full backward compatibility — the PS1, PS2 and PS3 catalogues will be available, with the goal to make the full range available, eventually. There was no mention, unsurprisingly, of backward compatibility with previous generation discs, but streaming will bypass issues emulating previous hardware, and, perhaps most importantly, keep the overall cost down. Details on how the system will work, pricing and so on will emerge later in the year.

Also, as part of the stated objective of making PS4 an experience always available and mobile, Gaikai streaming will power Remote Play from the new console to the PlayStation Vita. The objective is for all PS4 titles to support the feature, while Perry stated that the controller response and transmission times should be practically immediate.

More details will come throughout the year. What do you think of streaming games for full backward compatibility, and is Vita Remote Play a feature you're excited about? Let us know in the comments below.