The internet was bustling this morning with news of Sony Computer Entertainment’s intention to acquire the cloud-based gaming service - Gaikai - for a whopping $380 million.

This strategic move into Cloud gaming will allow Sony to offer an array of content to its customers across a number of internet-connected devices, be it Sony Smart TVs, set-top boxes, portable consoles such as the PlayStation Vita, Blu-ray players, possibly a future console or it could even be coming as an additional service to the PlayStation 3 console.

Cloud gaming is certainty for us gamers, whether fans of physical media like it or not, but with how the current ‘connected’ ecosystem is around the world, it isn’t going to takeover so soon...

A perfect connection will be desired, or at least required, if a new console was reliant entirely on the streaming service. Instead, a cloud-based service could offer gamers such offerings like backward compatible gaming of PS1 and PS2 games, perhaps streaming demos rather than download 1GB+ demos for twenty minutes of gameplay to even play entire full game releases using better technology and hardware than is inside your ageing PlayStation 3 console.

At the end of the day, Sony’s acquisition of Gaikai will allow them to bring their PlayStation experience to as many customers as possible via many different internet connected devices. Gaikai’s service will also be coming to Samsung’s connected Smart TVs under Beta this month, so we may not only be seeing PlayStation content on Sony branded devices but on other brands too.

Think about it - Sony’s next-gen console may already be sitting under your TV already.