M+E Daily

By Paul Sweeting

Sony did not actually show a PlayStation 4 console at yesterday’s Future of PlayStation event in New York, or reveal the price or ship date, so the presentation could hardly be called complete. The fact that it said virtually nothing about any broader home entertainment strategy beyond gaming for the new console, therefore, may simply reflect a PR strategy to focus on gaming first before hyping its other capabilities, rather than the absence of broader plans for the console. But given the increasingly multi-front battle among platforms for supremacy in the living room, some indication of a broader home entertainment play for PS4 would not have been out of place.

Certainly elements of a more ambitious strategy are in place. As was clear from yesterday’s announcement, PlayStation 4 will be tightly integrated with Gaikai, the cloud gaming platform Sony acquired last year. Users will be able to sample, download and stream games, as well as share game play with friends by posting video to social networks using a “share” button on the PS4 controller. They’ll also be able to stream PS4 games to the Vita handheld player for remote gaming.

In principle, at least, Gaikai’s cloud platform should also be capable of enhancing other types of online media as well, such as streaming music and video services, making the PlayStation Network more competitive with Microsoft’s Xbox Live or Apple’s iTunes ecosystem. So far, however, Sony has not said when or if such enhanced functionality may be coming.

The first order of business of the Gaikai platform, in fact, beyond what was unveiled yesterday, will apparently be enabling interoperability between the non-backwards compatible PlayStation 4 and games created for PS 3, a critical capability if Sony hopes to induce PS3 owners to upgrade to the new console. That could well push back work on extending the capabilities of the Gaikai platform beyond games.

Sony also announced a second-screen, PlayStation App for iOS and Android to enable enhanced game play and social networking on mobile devices. While reminiscent of Microsoft’s SmartGlass initiative, Sony has not yet indicated whether the PlayStation App can be leveraged for anything other than PS4 games, as SmatGlass can be.

Sony execs did give one brief nod to the PlayStation’s non-gaming capabilities at yesterday’s event, noting that the PS3 is the most popular device for accessing Netflix. Whether the PS4 can hold onto the mantle could depend on what we don’t yet know of Sony’s plans for it.