Sony has announced that they completed a deal last Friday to acquire gaming cloud service Gaikai. The service, similar to OnLive, cost Sony $380 million. The deal was originally rumored to be announced at E3 last month.

“By combining Gaikai’s resources including its technological strength and engineering talent with SCE’s extensive game platform knowledge and experience, SCE will provide users with unparalleled cloud entertainment experiences,” said Sony Computer Entertainment President and Group CEO Andrew House.

Cloud gaming allows gamers to play a game without having to run it on the local hardware, enabling high-quality games to be played on consoles, phones and apps with less than high quality hardware — all though streaming. This acquisition could be a major player for the next generation of consoles — perhaps Sony will use Gaikai’s services as an incentive for a cheaper SKU that is still capable of playing all PS4 titles. Or perhaps we won’t even need a new console at all, streaming all next gen titles directly to the PS3? Only time will tell!