Sony says cloud gaming won’t be a major part of its business before 2025

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) doesn’t expect cloud gaming to represent a major part of its business until 2025 at the earliest.

That’s according to CEO Jim Ryan, who was speaking as part of Microsoft’s ongoing court battle with the US Federal Trade Commission, which is seeking to block the Xbox maker’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

In April, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority said it was preventing the deal over concerns it would “alter the future of the fast-growing cloud gaming market, leading to reduced innovation and less choice for UK gamers over the years to come.”

Microsoft has since signed a handful of distribution agreements with cloud gaming providers designed to allay regulatory concerns over the proposed acquisition.

During a pre-recorded video deposition that aired in court on Tuesday, PlayStation’s Ryan was asked when cloud will become a commercial success or a significant part of its business.

“It obviously depends of how you define significant, but I will say that cloud technology will become a meaningful component of how gamers access games between 2025 and 2035,” he said.

Following some probing, Ryan said it was impossible to be more specific, but added: “We’re making significant investments in cloud in anticipation of it becoming a very meaningful way in the way that gamers access game content.”

Sony announced this month that it’s testing cloud streaming for PS5 games, a feature which will be offered to PlayStation Plus Premium subscribers when it launches.

Premium members, which totalled eight million (17% of total PS Plus subscribers) as of March 2023, can already stream games from older PlayStation consoles via the cloud.

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Ryan said in May: “We observe mobility in gaming habits to be an increasingly important trend, and the cloud will be fundamental to allowing us, or indeed anybody else, to exploit that trend.

“We do have some fairly interesting and quite aggressive plans to accelerate our initiatives in the space of the cloud that will unfold over the course of the coming months.”

More recently, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said technical issues remain with cloud-based gaming, calling the technology “very tricky” but a challenge “we want to take on”.