Sony buys Gaikai instant-streaming game service for $380MM

Sony’s gaming unit said Monday that it had agreed to acquire Gaikai, a company founded in 2008 to provide streaming games. (Rumors that Sony would acquire Gaikai emerged just before last month’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, suggesting that Sony would make the announcement at its press conference.) $380 million is not a bad payday for a service that, just a couple of years ago, people were suggesting was snake oil: Running high-end video games on remote servers, taking players’ controller input, doing all the processing remotely, then spitting back the game screens onto any device with fast internet and a display.