Gaming rivals’ Sony and Microsoft team up to lead gaming into the future

Microsofts’ Xbox and Sonys’ Playstation come together to take on new enemies in the gaming industry

Microsoft and Sony have spent almost two decades feuding over the gaming industry. The two parties have unveiled a partnership that embodies the ancient phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.

Who is the new enemy? No other than Google and Amazon, mainly prompted by Google’s reveal of its Stadia cloud streaming service. Google is planning to leverage YouTube to let people click and instantly play games in their browsers.

This potential disruption in the gaming industry has led Sony to look to Microsoft’s clouding experience to help power its existing and future streaming services. While Microsoft looks to fend off far larger gaming threats as cloud gaming starts to breach into the mainstream.

Bloomberg reports that the agreement even shocked Sony’s own PlayStation team, which apparently wasn’t made aware of the discussions. Microsoft and Sony have been in talks for months, and the once isolated Sony has started to show interest in working with Microsoft and others.

The future of gaming is up for grabs

Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are some of the few companies that have enough cloud experience and server power to make cloud gaming a reality. Latency is a key factor in cloud gaming, it requires servers to be close to players in multiple cities across the world. These three companies were willing to make the investment but Sony is either unwilling or unable to make the move.

To keep its dominance in gaming, Sony has now turned to Microsoft for help. Sony and Microsoft’s deal could have been a simple one to host Sony’s services on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform, but the agreement looks far more complex. “The two companies will explore joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services,” reads a statement from Microsoft.

This partnership is primed to take on Google Stadia and whatever cloud streaming service Amazon plans to launch. Sony and Microsoft don’t have cloud-native streaming services right now. They are simply taking the hardware that powers devices like the Xbox One S and the PlayStation 3 and placing it into data centers. Allowing them both to offer a big game library from their cloud streaming services.

WHO WILL RULE THE GAMING INDUSTRY?

Microsoft and Sony are sending a clear message to the rest of the industry. They are not willing to give up their gaming dominance to ‘newbies’ Amazon and Google.