With Sony’s E3 presentation on Monday, the internet is awash with rumours, this happens before every E3 event, some of those rumours come to fruition, some don’t.
A few days we reported here and here rumours about cloud gaming coming to the PS3.
It seems that the internet community is convinced that Sony is partnering with Gaikai, what is even more interesting, is that GamesIndustry reports that the deal with Gaikai may consist of PSOne and PS2 games being played on the PS3 via streaming, here is a quote from the source:
Sony's rumoured cloud gaming deal with Gaikai is to allow current-generation hardware to play PlayStation 2 and PSone games via a streaming solution, GamesIndustry International understands.
According to sources, the service will offer first-party games and be open to third-party publishers to sell back catalogue to players. The partnership is likely to be announced at E3 next week as part of Sony’s conference on Monday.
Gaikai already has an extensive portfolio of video game partners that have been on board with CEO David Perry’s vision since the service first went live, including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Capcom, but all titles so far have been for the PC format.
The appetite for PlayStation 2 games has been proven with collected HD releases of titles including Silent Hill, God of War, Devil May Cry and Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.
A backwards compatibility offering at this stage in the PS3's lifecycle would also allow Sony to test streaming games before it goes fully next-gen with the release of the PlayStation 4.
Sony’s history with backwards compatibility is patchy. The PlayStation 3 originally allowed gamers to play older PlayStation 2 and PSone games, but support for PS2 games was dropped as the PS3 went through a number of different iterations. PSone and PlayStation 2 games are currently available for download on the PlayStation Store.