Sony was forced to bring one of its coolest PlayStation features to the PC

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Kazuo Hirai

AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi

Sony Corp. President and CEO Kazuo Hirai reacts during a press conference at the Sony headquarters in Tokyo Thursday, Feb. 6, 2014

The "Remote Play" feature that lets a PlayStation 4 stream games to a PC almost never happened, according to TechDirt

Sony, which makes the PlayStation, did not originally have plans to bring the feature to the PC, choosing instead to roll it out to the company's portable gaming handset, the PlayStation Portable. 

A group of "modders" - people who expand the functionality of production software and hardware - found a way to make "Remote Play" work without Sony's help, releasing it to the public. The hack became a hit and Sony was effectively forced into making "Remote Play" work on PCs. 

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Sony's president of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida, tweeted out the news, which has been retweeted over 2,300 times.  

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Microsoft's Xbox One has a similar functionality, letting Windows 10 users stream games from the console. Gamers are taking to Windows 10, and the Xbox, at a rate, and Sony clearly did not want to be left out. Phil Spencer, the executive in charge of Xbox at Microsoft, has described gaming as "critical" to the success of Windows 10. 

Sony has seen record sales of the PlayStation 4, selling over 30 million units since its launch.