I'm also interested in seeing how they implement this. I've bought and played a few games for my PS3 which, if I ever bought a PS4, I might want to play again on the PS4.

It brings up a lot of questions I don't know the answer to, though... I wonder how exactly they will implement this in terms of DRM? Will I be able to stick in my disc, have it validate the game is mine, and that will unlock a Gaikai playback option? What about my old saved game files, will I be able to seamlessly use those automatically? Will I have to backup the save games to the cloud before I can access them through Gaikai? Will I be required to pay the PS3 "playstation plus" subscription to make that happen, since cloud backups are a playstation-plus-only feature? What about DLC: if I bought the game on disc and then downloaded additional for-pay content, will I be able to access that DLC through Gaikai? What if the game was purchased through the Playstation store on the PS3, will I be able to access that through Gaikai?

Although Microsoft may have botched their messaging on the Xbone, Sony has, as far as I know, not had any messaging at all on their Gaikai integration. Any links you know of which would show us details of how they expect to handle those issues?

I have to say, though, based on my experience with OnLive (similar service to Gaikai), I'm skeptical that streaming is going to be a replacement for proper backward compatibility. Streaming a game is simply a poor substitute for playing it directly. Although the technology is impressive and the games are quite playable that way, there are still problems which degrade the experience slightly: The video is fuzzier, the control inputs are delayed by a noticeable number of milliseconds, and no one else in the household can be using the internet for anything else while you're playing or else you'll get hitches and sputters in your game.

I concede that I have little experience with Gaikai, and it's possible that they may have significantly improved upon the technology, so I'll reserve my judgement until I try it. Hopefully Sony will have improved their network so that it doesn't go down all the time: I know that the state of the current Sony Playstation Network is such that it goes down about once per gaming session for me. I know this because even when I'm playing a single-player disc-based game, I see an onscreen popup telling me when the Playstation Network goes down. Boy, if these companies want us to move to the cloud, they'd sure better improve those clouds.

I suppose, though, that streaming a game through Gaikai might offer a better overall experience than a poorly-implemented emulation mode might offer, so I understand how this can be a positive thing. On the other hand, the Xbox 360's backward compatibility emulation of original Xbox games worked quite well, I'm quite happy with the way Xbox games run on my 360. I'm sure that the only reason Sony and Microsoft aren't doing that this time round, is because the implementation cost for Microsoft's project far exceeded any sales they might have gained from having the feature.