Which is scarey AF! We don't need such centralization of the internet.
Why? Azure has a minority of the server cloud market, it isn't even the market leader.
PSN server cloud, Sony's game server clouds, PS Now server cloud or this company's server cloud can be hosted in Azure, Amazon AWS or many other ones.
Azure doesn't have anything special and doesn't perform better or have unique features compared to the other companies who offer the same, often cheaper or offering better performance. Sony, this company or anyone else don't need Azure, maybe did choose it because MS offered a better deal for their specific case or because or something like that.
Maybe this will tie into their PS1-PS3 backwards compatibility solution? Just stream a large library instead of letting people download them.
This is a cloud gaming company with maybe the best implementation of cloud gaming on mobile. So probaly Sony wants to use their technology to stream PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5 games via PS Now to mobile.
Have Sony even gone full in on Azure? I know they signed an agreement to explore working together and share tech, but has anything concrete come from it? I think a lot of the backend services are multi-cloud compatible anyway (using Openstack) which would make sense, I wouldn't want to put all my eggs in one basket.
Yes, in addition to share R&D as part of this deal they agreed to migrate PSN, PS Now servers and so on to Azure and as I remember they already migrated them (I'd bet it was when they made the big changes everywhere to support PS5).
Azure doesn't offer the best prices, scalability options, more data centers or something like that. Sony's servers are a giant monster so they must have millions in servers every year, so maybe MS offered them a great deal for being such a huge potential client for them.
These companies run many different business areas. Even if they may compete in one they an hire each other in other area and so on. They care about business, not about fanboy wars.