PlayStation boss: “We believe the streaming era is upon us.”

Enlarge / PlayStation Now currently offers 780 streaming games, and Sony promises to expand that catalog significantly going forward.

In a wide-ranging investor presentation that focused on Sony’s future gaming plans, Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan echoed comments from companies like Google in saying “we believe the streaming era is upon us and is about to begin a period of rapid growth.”

To support that bold statement, Ryan cited Sony’s own internal data on the 5.6 million PS4 owners that use the system’s Remote Play functionality, which essentially turns the console into a home server that can stream games to PC/Mac, iOS, and Xperia-branded Android devices. The “growing appetite” for that feature among PS4 users is “one of the concrete reasons we feel the move to streaming is upon us,” Ryan said, and the feature will make a return for the PS4’s console successor.

Sony has also learned a lot about streaming’s potential from PlayStation Now, the streaming game service it launched in 2015. In opening remarks, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said examining usage patterns for PlayStation Now’s 700,000 subscribers has taught the company “what kinds of games fit the needs of people who subscribe to such a service. We intend to strengthen content catalog, including AAA titles, and are working to make those improvements.”