When Sony bought the Gaikai game streaming service earlier last year and announced this year that it would be used to add backwards compatibility to the PlayStation 4, it certainly got people’s attention. Neither the PS4 nor the Xbox One offered native backwards compatibility and, properly implemented, using Gaikai could give Sony a leg up in the console war.

Now, Sony Computer Entertainment President Andrew House says that we can expect Gaikai to be rolled out starting in 2014.

House revealed this information in an interview with Eurogamer prior to the PS4’s launch in the UK. Not only will the PS4 have the Gaikai service but House revealed that the current plan is to roll out Gaikai to the PlayStation Vita handheld as well.

Further details were given to Eurogamer by an anonymous source at Sony. The plan is for beta tests of the service to begin in early 2014 with a roll-out in North America targeted for Q3 2014. Other countries outside Europe would get Gaikai at some point in 2014 after North America. European PS4 gamers would have to wait until 2015.

So we know roughly when to expect Gaikai to roll out and we have an idea of what to expect Gaikai to have (PS1, PS2 and PS3 games that we can’t otherwise play on the PS4) but we don’t know how it’s going to work. No, I don’t mean “through the power of the cloud.”

My biggest hang up about Gaikai is pricing and game availability. Will my PSN account that has a decent idea of which games I own and play (I would assume it does anyway) allow me to access those same games on Gaikai without charging me for them? Would I get that service only if I had PlayStation Plus? Would I have to pay a subscription fee regardless of which older games I own? Will all games on Gaikai be offered with a subscription or would it just be a la carte?

I’m sure that these are all things that Sony are currently thinking about and probably won’t release publicly until much closer to launch. The success of Gaikai is going to be dependent on how it’s setup for customers. A good deal for Gaikai users would go a long way to earning them a lot of goodwill and more money with it. A bad deal… Well, that could taint perception of SCE for a long time to come.

Source: Eurogamer