Posted Thu Jan 12, 2012 at 08:30 AM PST by Dick Ward
A cloud gaming provider says Microsoft or Sony will be skipping out on the console race, but since we already know Microsoft has something in the works that only leaves one company.
The rumor mill is abuzz with the possibilities of next generation consoles appearing at E3, TGS and even CES 2013. We know Microsoft has something in the works, but Sony has been straightfoward about the whole thing, stating that they have no plans to show or talk about the PS4 at E3 this year.
A cloud gaming provider known as Gaikai is stirring the rumor mill a bit, claiming that one of the three hardware providers will be quitting the console race. Nintendo has already announced a new console and they seem to be doing alright for themselves and we know that Microsoft has something in the works. That means - if the rumor is true anyway - Sony will be quitting consoles.
It's hard to tell just how legit this rumor is. The PlayStation 3 seems to have at least a few years of life left in it and Sony could be thinking of cloud based gaming as the way forward. That or they could just duck back and use their internal development studios to crank out hits that aren't exclusive to one platform.
It's been a while since we've had a console generation that didn't have Sony in it. Not only would this news be big news for Microsoft it could be big news for any other company that might want to create a game console - there just might be an open spot on the market.
We're treating this as nothing more than rumor and speculation for now, but you can bet this is a development we'll be following closely.
Source: Tom's Hardware
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