Cooling of the Hardware Arms Race?
Making consoles is expensive - there are years of research and development, they tend to sell at a loss at launch and, by the time theyre cheap enough to make a profit on, everyone wants a new model. By beginning the switchover to streaming, Sony could be gearing up to moving the arms race to the more scalable environment of the data centre. Theres a lot less risk in running a subscription service that grows with your audience rather than taking a huge gamble every few years on producing brutish hardware and shipping it around the world while still trying to make a profit. Of course, were talking way into the future here and Sony would still have to produce a device to stream these games, but the overhead for this would be minimal. Look at the OnLive console available today - the thing is tiny but acts as a gateway to a full PC experience.