Sony trademarks PS Cloud name

By Robert Purchese Published 31 March, 2009

Readying game-streaming for PS3/PSP?

Sony has registered a trademark for PS Cloud, fuelling rumours the company is developing its own OnLive-like game streaming service.

The filing, spotted by Kotaku, protects PS Cloud from "entertainment services, namely, providing an online videogame that users may access through the internet".

Sony already uses this technology to allow the PSP to remotely control games and films running on PS3. A fuller implementation would make sense. The technical difficulties, however, remain massive, as Richard Leadbetter pointed out while dissecting OnLive.

Of course, the cloud name may also point to a global account service that stores saved games and account settings so they can be accessed from any PS3, similar to SteamCloud.

Note, too, that many trademarked products never get made and are simply registered 'just in case'.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (12) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Dizzy #1 3 years ago

    The streaming hype train moves up!

  • neilka #2 3 years ago

    Sounds like vapourware to me.

  • Razz #3 3 years ago

    Until some kind of refund policy or virtual game trading comes in effect I'm not excited about this.

    For instance I bought Noby noby boy, whilst cheap, I wasn't impressed by it in the slightest, but I've bought it and I'm stuck with it and, as far as I know, there's no way for me to sell it or get my money back. :( Same goes for Worms XBLA and DoD on Steam. :(

  • Razz #4 3 years ago

    I'm not moaning about the price. I'm moaning about the fact that I can't return a game I don't like, regardless of price. I was very careful to make that clear in my previous post.

  • IronCladChicken #5 3 years ago

    Razz has a point though - It generally costs more ot buy a game on Steam than it does to buy a copy on disc from Amazon, play, etc. (If Steam stops so much piracy, why do the games cost so much)

    If cloud game distribution does take off, a title will only be available directly from the distributer (Sony, MS, etc..) & without competition game prices may rise.

    Though I'm sure a subscription service wil be introduced at some point?

  • RexRunti #6 3 years ago

    At least with all XBLA games you can get a pretty accurate demo, so I don't begrudge them a no-refunds policy as you know what your buying (themes and gamer pictures are a different matter). Aside from WipeOut I haven't bought anything from PSN because there really is nothing I can do if I don't like it and won't know if I'll like it.

  • zuljin #7 3 years ago

    @IronCladChicken
    "If cloud game distribution does take off, a title will only be available directly from the distributer (Sony, MS, etc..) & without competition game prices may rise."

    If one company does do it successfully, the others will probably follow suit. So in the end you'd still get third party developers making games and trying to get them published on all three (online) platforms. I don't understand how you think the competition would dissapear?

  • nick_f Verified Senior Producer, Microsoft #8 3 years ago

    "Readying game-streaming for PS3/PSP?"

    Wow, EG. Just.... wow.

    Cloud computing doesn't equal "streaming game service".

    More than likely this is just a way of storing games, saved games and configuration settings on (you guessed it) the cloud.

    Way to ride the fanboy hype train, though.

    "Note, too, that many trademarked products never get made and are simply registered 'just in case'."

    Note, too, that many speculative pieces of "journalism" rarely come true and are simply posted to "drive traffic"
    Edited by nick_f at 31/03/09 @ 12:00

  • Sunyavadin #9 3 years ago

    Already called it in the forum thread about Onlive.

    Exactly as happened with the Phantom - investment scammers make a mint off an idea like this - then the big names like MS, Nintendo, and Sony actually DELIVER a working service that does what the fraudsters claimed.

  • Marshall2008 #10 3 years ago

    P(i)S Cloud

  • callum9999 #11 3 years ago

    I doubt it. When I use it even playing music is laggy and it skips, let alone using a game.

  • 3william56 #12 3 years ago

    More likely they're bringing Jenova Chen's first offering to the PSN.

    Razz, does it really matter?? Try returning a car you don't like. Or a Mars Bar. Or that shirt you wore for a night and a chick laughed at. How many other products can you try then send back? Look at, sure. Try on, yep. Actually take home, use for a decent amount of time then return? None. The game return policy was a response to lots of cr*p games at forty quid a pop, not cheapo impulse buy stuff like NNB (and hey, you've got demos and reviews of most, so how surprised can you be?). And as for trading/trade-in, the removal of trading losses and physical media makes the game cheaper (look at Warhawk or Wipeout HD - would you rather have paid full whack for them?). So the ten quid you might have got for a tradein you've already saved.

    The point about some versions of cloud stuff may be a shift to use based / rental of the game (not the nonsense OnLive streaming version) like movies have already started. So no more 40 quid purchase, pay by the hour. Which should suit you down to the ground if you're worried about the up front cost.

    Embrace the future! Whilst it embraces your wallet!