Sony?s new
PlayStation Vita TV lets you play over 1,300 PlayStation Vita gameson your television, essentially transforming the handheld platform into a low-cost, low-profile home game console.
But if Sony gets everything right ? and that?s a big if ? PS Vita TV  could become much more than a low-cost alternative to high-end game  consoles. It could itself become a high-end game console.
As it stands, PS Vita TV is already a pretty attractive value. It?s a  low-cost (9,954 yen in Japan, which will surely translate to $99.99 for  the eventual U.S. launch) machine with a big library. In Japan, Sony  has a massive collection of games on its PlayStation Network download  service that will work with Vita TV right out of the box. Most of these  games are from the libraries of the original PlayStation console and the  PSP. Throw in the ability to play Vita native games and use video  streaming services and it?s an attractive set-top box, something on the  order of Apple TV or Ouya, but with all the power of PlayStation behind  it.
Vita TV can also be used as a sort of Slingbox for the PlayStation 4.  Buy Sony?s $399 next-gen game machine when it hits this year, and  you?ll be able to hook up a Vita TV to your secondary television and  stream your PS4 games from one room to another.
But the potential game-changer is Gaikai, the
game streaming service that Sony acquired last yearfor $380 million.
Gaikai?s technology allows users to play games that are being  processed not on the hardware they own but on remote servers. The  scenario that Sony has laid out so far is that even though the upcoming  PlayStation 4 will not be natively compatible with games from the  PlayStation 3, Sony could stream those games to PS4.
Recently, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe?s CEO said that the plan is to
roll out Gaikai on PlayStation 4 in North America in 2014, then eventually bring the service to PlayStation 3 and Vita.
That means that Sony already plans to let PlayStation Vita TV users,  at some point, play PS3 content via streaming. If it can get that up and  running, there?s no reason it couldn?t do the same with PlayStation 4  content as well. The technical challenge of streaming games has nothing  to do with the power of the server-side hardware, it?s all about  minimizing input lag and scaling the service so it won?t choke under the  weight of millions of PlayStation owners.
And that?s really the big ?if? here; can Sony solve these technical  issues so that streaming can be a viable replacement for owning the  actual hardware? If it can craft a service that reasonably meets  players? expectations, it might be able to seriously expand the reach of  the PlayStation 4 platform.
This is all contingent, of course, on the PS Vita TV actually selling  well enough to make such a move worthwhile. Value is in the eye of the  beholder; there may simply not be a big enough audience out there that  wants a $100 game console in the first place.
But if it does catch on, it could be the best home for the Gaikai  service. Playing PlayStation 3 content on PS4 would be a neat additional  feature that few players would really take advantage of ? why play your  old games when you can play so many brand new ones? But playing  next-generation console games on a $100 box that fits in the palm of  your hand? That could be the biggest deal of all.