Sony looks to be gearing up for a new PlayStation cloud gaming platform

Is the successor to PS Plus on the horizon?

(Credit: Sony)

Following the death of Google Stadia last year and the gradual expansion of Xbox Cloud Gaming, Sony looks to be carving out its own piece of the game streaming pie.

As spotted by The Verge, Sony has started a new round of hires for more than 20 positions to work on cloud gaming tech, suggesting the company is gearing up for a serious expansion into the world of streaming.

➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Sony cloud gaming

• ☁ Sony looks to be gearing up for a new cloud gaming project

• 🙌 The tech giant has gone on a hiring spree

• 🤔 New job posts talk about developing “the cloud gaming revolution”

• 👩‍🍳 It’s too early to say what exactly Sony has cooking

The job titles range from senior positions, like director of product management for cloud gaming and senior platform engineers, to more junior roles. Many of them report to Sony’s internal Future Technology Group, a team that Sony describes as “leading the charge in the cloud gaming revolution. FTG is at the forefront of putting console-quality video games on any device.”

FTG isn’t solely concerned with cloud gaming, although it looks to be the main focus of these new positions. One job is explicitly described as having the responsibility to “develop and deliver the strategic vision for cloud game streaming at PlayStation”, and others place a big emphasis on developing streaming technology that works across devices, not only Sony’s flagship consoles.

It’s unclear what exactly they’ll be developing. It could take the form of a brand-new PlayStation cloud platform, or a revamp to the existing streaming capabilities of PS Plus. When Sony relaunched the premium subscription service last year, it bundled it together with PS Now – a cloud gaming platform that let subscribers stream PlayStation games to PC and consoles.

Cloud gaming is certainly on the up, despite Google Stadia’s unceremonious demise. A report produced as part of the UK’s investigation into the Microsoft-Activision deal revealed Xbox Cloud Gaming is by far and away the dominant streaming platform for gaming, and will likely continue to be even after Microsoft promised to put future Xbox PC games on Nvidia’s rival GeForce Now.

The growth of Xbox Game Pass has fuelled Microsoft’s streaming platform, even as the expansion of the subscription service has slowed in recent months. Sony was likely hoping its revamped PS Plus would ape that success, but its cloud streaming services aren’t as far along as Microsoft’s

Xbox Cloud Gaming lets you stream the latest Xbox Series X|S games directly to your console, PC, phone or tablet, while the PS Plus library is more limited and can’t stream PS5 games to PC. It also can’t stream directly to phones, and instead requires you to run them on a PlayStation console before streaming them to another device. It’s those kinks that Sony will hopefully iron out in the future.