As long as it's them relaunching PlayStation Home and staying away from NFTs, fine. I think a lot of people would like to see PS Home come back with PSVR2 for example.
Selling Drake digital stickers looking like they were drawn by a 5-year old in Photoshop for $50? No thank you.
Sony isn't reliant on azure servers for nothing. They already have online multiplayer, game subscriptions, a metaverse and cloud gaming before making any deal with MS and Sony owns the related cloud gaming patents.
The only thing Azure provided Sony than their previous option was probably a cheaper price for servers for Sony in exchange for a cheaper price to allow MS use Sony patents regarding cloud gaming.
And yes, PlayStation Home wasn't just gaming. It was a virtual world focused on online interaction with other players, having many different activities like access to games or minigames, tons of microtransactions of branded stuff. It had a lot of customization items or areas from many different games, movies, etc.
IIRC Sony and Microsoft simply signed a MOU (Memorandum of Understanding), correct? Which is basically them setting some conditions where Sony could potentially leverage Azure in the future if desired, but in the meantime mainly involves the two sharing ideas back and forth?
In other words unless something's changed, I don't think Sony is actually using Azure cloud ATM, but they did upgrade their own existing servers and server software. It's not a 'strategic partnership' the way MS & Sega's agreement is, for instance.
Hmmm interesting. Just because Sony had a gaming vr headset and ps3 streaming from cloud, doesn’t automatically mean they will be able to compete with Facebook, Microsoft and google when it comes to metaverse. The mere fact they are going to enter that arena surprises me.
I was talking about subscription services, GAAS games, and a change of heart towards legacy content.
Well, let's be honest here: to date there have arguably only been three notably successful (maybe four, if you count Fortnite) "virtual world" metaverse-like experiences. Those are:
-Second Life
-PlayStation Home
-GTA5: Online
-Fortnite
Those are the only four which have the most in common with at least some major aspects of what companies want this "metaverse" to be, and all have one thing in common: they're all from companies squarely in the core gaming business. The only exception to that, somewhat, is Second Life, but their developer (Linden Lab) was formed with people who came from companies such as, among others, EA and Disney, so even they had a strong core gaming & entertainment DNA from the get-go.
Google and Facebook have no real presence in the core gaming market; Microsoft does, but have struggled in terms of 1P outside of a small handful of franchises. They also have no experience with VR in the core gaming space from a 1P perspective, which is supposedly important for metaverse. Out of that list of those four games, the ones that was most designed to mimic an interconnected 3D social simulation world/universe are Second Life and PlayStation Home, but only one of them, PS Home, has a developer who has since also gone heavily into VR for core gaming.
Microsoft, Google, Facebook (well, less so Facebook these days with how much they've lost) may have a lot of money, but if we're talking in terms of big platform holders, Sony arguably has more experience in designing a fleshed-out "metaverse"-style interconnected 3D online social world (and targeted tuning of 3D entertainment (gaming) applications for VR) than all three of those companies combined. The only one that may come close is Facebook, but they lack the creative resources and game design experience of Sony. Microsoft has VR and AR initiatives in industries like cloud, medical, military etc. but none of that is actual experience on the gaming side, and you can't buy experience (well, you can hire "experience" but as a company you can't buy what experience teaches you with time). Google's only real advantage is having a lot of money, that's about it.
I would put Apple somewhere behind Facebook; Facebook has more VR experience in the consumer gaming/core gaming market, but Apple arguably have as much if not more gaming experience due to Apple Arcade. They have also gradually worked with game developers hailing from the core gaming scene on select games here and there. The reason I keep stressing the core gaming market is because IMO metaverse will only work if a company can make the experience feel intuitive, fluid, and entertaining with a high level of production polish and immersion.
AAA game development tends to stress those things more than other types of games, since they often have the most money invested into them and lead the market with cutting-edge graphics, animations, physics, audio design etc. Even many military simulators lack those level of production values. So to me, the company that has the most experience in those areas will probably be the first big success with any type of "metaverse" style concept, and in terms of just talking purely platform holders, Sony is in the lead over other competitors in that regard.
Though, again, something like another GTA Online or Fortnite with even further developed social elements and integration with real-world products, events etc. could be the first to it, as well.
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