Sony’s chief executive has warned that cloud gaming is still technically “very tricky,” playing down the risk to the console maker of the industry quickly converting to a technology on which its rival Microsoft has bet heavily.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Kenichiro Yoshida said the PlayStation creator would still study “various options” in the future for streaming games over the Internet itself, adding it could utilize GT Sophy, its artificial intelligence agent, to enhance cloud gaming.

“I think cloud itself is an amazing business model, but when it comes to games, the technical difficulties are high,” said Yoshida, citing latency—the fast response times demanded by gamers—as the biggest issue. “So there will be challenges to cloud gaming, but we want to take on those challenges.”

Despite various attempts to remake the gaming industry around the cloud, many users have yet to switch from a console or high-end gaming PC to streaming games entirely over the Internet, fearing the lags that can be caused by slowing Internet connectivity and server speeds.

Publishers have also not been fully supportive. In January, Google shut down its Stadia streaming service after most game producers held back from making their top titles available on the platform.

The promise of cloud gaming is still unfulfilled after more than a decade of development. Sony was one of the first big companies to enter the market, having acquired cloud gaming company Gaikai for $380 million in 2012 and later the technologies of its rival, OnLive.

While it launched a cloud gaming subscription service in 2014 that is now integrated with its upgraded and expanded service PS Plus Premium, analysts say Sony has not capitalized on its early bet to establish itself as a leader in the field.

Yoshida also pointed to the costly inefficiencies of cloud gaming where servers are idle for much of the day before having to cope with the high levels of traffic of gamers playing during the evening or “dark time.” He added that Sony had responded by unleashing GT Sophy in the quiet hours to learn how to beat human competitors in the auto-racing simulator Gran Turismo.

“The dark time for cloud gaming had been an issue for Microsoft as well as Google, but it was meaningful that we were able to use those [quieter] hours for AI learning,” said Yoshida, speaking at the company’s headquarters in Tokyo.

He declined to comment on the impact Sony foresees from Microsoft’s $75 billion agreed purchase of the publisher Activision, the company behind the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft game franchises, saying regulatory reviews were continuing.

But the deal has rattled the global gaming industry, where the US software company is engaged in a cut-throat battle with Sony for dominance of console gaming.

Industry and regulatory concerns have focused on whether Microsoft would make Activision’s games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service, a move that could potentially accelerate the shift away from consoles.

Last month, the UK competition regulator blocked the acquisition, concluding that the takeover would cement Microsoft’s dominance of the nascent cloud gaming market. According to Microsoft, its Xbox Cloud Gaming service has more than 20 million users.

The regulatory response has been mixed, however, with EU regulators clearing the purchase on the basis that Microsoft had made concessions to alleviate its concerns.

If it goes through, the deal would make Microsoft the third-biggest gaming company by revenue, behind China’s Tencent and Sony.

© 2023 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

After a lot of hype from game makers in 2021, big publishers have been relatively quiet on the idea of integrating non-fungible tokens into their games since the collapse of Ubisoft’s “Quartz Digits” platform last year. But EA Sports this week is proving the game industry hasn’t completely abandoned the blockchain-based collectible technology, announcing a partnership with Nike’s “.Swoosh” NFT platform to let players “express their personal style through play.”

Details are still scarce, and Nike says that more information will be available “in the coming months.” But the company said in a statement that “select .Swoosh virtual creations” will “unlock brand new levels of customization within the EA SPORTS ecosystem” and provide players with “unique new opportunities for self-expression and creativity through sport and style.”

In other words, it sounds like you’ll soon be able to put your NFT Nike sneakers on your Madden team.

Why this time could be different

As skeptical as we’ve been about previous efforts to integrate NFTs into games, this partnership could avoid some of the field’s most common pitfalls. For one, Nike is already an established brand with legions of sneakerheads that follow its every move. And those fans have already shown at least some willingness to invest in digital swag bearing Nike’s iconic swoosh. The company’s first “Virtual Sneaker Drop”—featuring “digital renditions” of the company’s iconic Air Force 1 line—reached over $1 million in sales to early beta users in less than a week, according to CoinDesk.

Those NFTs might become even more valuable to Nike fans if and when they can be used to unlock digital drip in EA Sports titles. And these kinds of “real-world clothing” cosmetics also seem like items that could be relatively easy for other developers and publishers to integrate into their own games (unlike Ubisoft’s awkward, serial-numbered virtual items). That means other publishers could theoretically follow EA’s lead here, integrating support for Nike’s virtual fashions as a marketing tool targeting fashion-conscious gamers.

What’s In The Game? Only time will tell…@EASPORTS x .SWOOSH 🎮⚽️🏈🏆 pic.twitter.com/AXgidKX7rd

— .SWOOSH (@dotSWOOSH) June 1, 2023

That could plausibly create a kind of cycle where support from more games leads to more interest in Nike’s NFTs, which in turn leads more game makers to sign on, and so on. If enough game makers start featuring those Nike collectibles, we could plausibly reach NFT bulls’ dream scenario of digital items that you buy once and use across multiple properties around the Internet.

Of course, for any of that to happen, Nike and EA will first have to get over the deep and longstanding animosity gamers have shown for any game developer that even hints at making NFTs part of its gaming plans (not to mention the wider collapse in NFT interest across multiple markets). And if the prospect of showing off Nike swag in online games can’t break through that inherent hostility, there’s a good chance nothing will.

Regardless, by leaning on Nike’s established brand—and letting it serve as a third party that markets and sells the NFTs themselves—EA Sports could avoid some of the problems other companies have faced in trying to build and sell NFT collections from scratch.

It has been only a week since Nintendo removed a number of popular The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom item-duplication glitches with the release of the game’s 1.1.2 update patch. But intrepid players have already found alternate methods for creating infinite items to build and fight to their heart’s content.

The most straightforward (if slow) new method for item duplication, as described by Kibbles Gaming, involves fusing an item to a weapon, preparing to throw that weapon, and then watching previously viewed cutscenes via the “memories” section of the Adventure Log. Each memory you view apparently advances the game’s logic by a single frame, letting you easily pinpoint the four-frame timing window where you can throw a weapon while also retaining a copy in your inventory. While this method is consistent and simple to perform (even early in the game), it can take quite a while to fill up your inventory this way.

A more efficient item duplication method requires you to purchase Link’s House near Tarry Town in the east, then place a shock emitter item near the weapon display. With good timing, you can place a weapon on that display during the same frame that the shock emitter knocks it out of your hands, thus creating two copies of the weapon (and any fused item) instantly.

While this method lets you create functionally infinite item copies quickly, it requires a lot more in-game set-up and some relatively precise timing. Other players have found that quickly removing pieces of rubber armor can help with the “shock” timing, at least.

We expect Nintendo will patch out these newly discovered item-dupe methods relatively quickly, but we don’t imagine that will stop intrepid players from finding further exploits. After all, while Nintendo released a few Breath of the Wild patches in the months after its 2017 release, players have since found plenty of exploitable glitches in that game, including one that’s strikingly similar to the latest Tears of the Kingdom item duplication exploit. One of those Breath of the Wild glitches—which even lets players duplicate rare korok seeds—was discovered as recently as early 2022, showing that there isn’t really a time limit on how long Zelda players will spend figuring out how to break these games.

Rather than engaging in this cat-and-mouse glitch-fixing fight, we still think that Nintendo should lean in and make item duplication an official part of the game. A fully supported item duplication code or separate “creative mode” would give many players the infinite, grind-free Zelda sandbox they so obviously want and deserve without ruining the carefully constructed challenges Nintendo worked so hard on.

Listing image by BLAINES / YouTube