In a short statement, the CEO of Sony said something that could be a significant help to Microsoft in its bid to acquire Activision Blizzard King…

Kenichiro Yoshida, Sony’s president, and CEO, has made a short statement, reported in the Financial Times. In short, Yoshida may have unwittingly lent a helping hand to Microsoft, which is now struggling with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, the CMA, the only authority that has not approved the $68.7 billion acquisition. (There is also the FTC in the US, the Federal Trade Commission, but they have filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft…)

“I think the cloud itself is an amazing business model, but the technical difficulties are high when it comes to games. So there will be challenges to cloud gaming, but we want to take on those challenges,” Yoshida said. A few years ago, there was an agreement between Yoshida and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: Sony and Microsoft entered into a technology partnership to work together on cloud-based technologies related to the duo of games and artificial intelligence.

One result of the collaboration was Gran Turismo Sophy, announced in February 2022. GT Sophy is an artificial intelligence based on machine learning algorithms that can race against the best drivers. Yoshida said: “The dark age of cloud gaming was a problem for both Microsoft and Google, but it was telling that we could use these lessons to learn artificial intelligence.” He also acknowledged that it is not efficient enough to run cloud servers 24/7 when most gaming hours are usually in the evening.

Yoshida is not very worried about cloud gaming in the short to medium term. It is easy to imagine that Microsoft’s legal team will use the Sony president’s statement against the CMA (as he is in the same position as Microsoft), even though Sony’s PlayStation division is most opposed to Redmond’s expansion…

Source: WCCFTech