Report: PlayStation staff were in the dark about the Sony and Microsoft team-up

Sony and Microsoft announced last week that the companies had forged a partnership centered around streaming, cloud, and AI technology, but a report from Bloomberg suggests that staff at Sony’s game division didn’t know about the deal until the moment of the public announcement.

A spokesperson speaking to the publication confirmed that Sony had been in talks with Microsoft since last year, but declined to elaborate further. Bloomberg’s sources, meanwhile, say that PlayStation staff were caught off-guard by the announcement and that the deal was made “largely without the involvement” of staff at PlayStation.

Last week’s deal with Microsoft sees it and Sony collaborating on the development of streaming technology driven by Microsoft Azure and Sony utilizing current Azure technology for some of its own streaming services. PlayStation notably has its own game streaming service in PlayStation Now, but the cloud-based game service space is getting more crowded as Google’s Stadia and other platforms enter the fray.