Last week, Sony and Microsoft came out with a big surprise announcement. Both the companies are teaming up to work on cloud products for their respective game and content-streaming services.

The partnership will see Sony using Microsoft’s Azure for its own game-streaming services, which is a huge win for Microsoft as it’s also competing with Google and Amazon, both of which are building their own game-streaming services on their respective cloud infrastructures.

There is, however, a slight problem. According to a report from Bloomberg, Sony’s senior management team in Tokyo was responsible for the negotiations with Redmond, meaning the PlayStation team were left out.

It seems like the PlayStation unit wasn’t aware of the plans at all. Apparently, managers had “to calm workers and assure” them on its plans for the next-gen PlayStation after the news came out. Sony also had to make key organisational changes internally to push forward with the Microsoft partnership, going as far as moving some senior PlayStation Now (its existing game-streaming service) Staff to other divisions. Considering how the gaming community works and thinks, that was a pretty bold move by Sony.

At the end of the day, though, Sony’s partnership with Microsoft probably won’t affect PlayStation much. Sony will mainly be using Microsoft’s Azure for its game-streaming services as building its own infrastructure as big as what Microsoft (and Google and Amazon) already have will take a lot of time and money. So if you are a PlayStation owner worried that the new partnership will affect PlayStation, I personally don’t think there is much to worry about.

Tagged with Microsoft, Playstation, Sony, Xbox