Even Sony’s CEO knows cloud gaming doesn’t exist yet

although game console While showing off a dedicated streaming device, Sony’s own CEO knew cloud gaming still had its limits.

Last week, Sony unveiled its rumored Project Q, a device all about cloud streaming. Think something like the Nintendo Switch, except you can’t play it on your TV, all your games can only be streamed through the cloud, looks like someone snapped a PS5 controller in half and turned it off branded flat computer. It’s underwhelming news, mostly because while cloud gaming has made some progress, it’s clearly not there yet, with internet speed being the biggest hurdle for most people. And in a recent interview with the Financial Times (thanks to VGC), Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida himself said that he knows there are still technical difficulties with cloud gaming.

“I think the cloud itself is an amazing business model, but when it comes to gaming, the technical difficulty is high,” Yoshida said of the latency issue, the time between when a button is pressed and when a response happens in the game, and how this is The biggest hurdle to overcome. “So cloud gaming will have challenges, but we want to meet those challenges.”

Yoshida also talked about how the game’s peak hours during the day can fluctuate wildly, with large numbers of players logging in after finishing work, and how economically inefficient it is to run when not many players are online. On top of that, a large number of players logging in at the same time can also cause problems.The CEO referred to that time of day as the “dark hour,” and went on to say: “Cloud gaming’s dark hour is a problem for both Microsoft and Google, but it makes sense for us to be able to use those [quieter] AI learning time. ”

Details about Project Q are pretty bare-bones right now, with the main feature being an 8-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1080p and a frame rate of 60fps, and obviously the most important thing is the ability to play PS5 games anytime, anywhere. Whether it can fill the void Sony might want in the handheld market remains a big question, since the Switch and Steam Deck have the benefit of not relying on a good internet connection. So who knows what the actual use case for Project Q is.