Sony officially confirmed a longstanding games industry rumor today by saying that it plans to expand PlayStation franchises into the mobile realm. Specifically, the company plans to “explore” the mobile market with one of the many franchises in its catalog in order to “welcome millions of new gamers to the PlayStation family.”
We’ve heard rumors that a push to mobile was in the cards for PlayStation, borne out by a recent job listing that said Sony was seeking a new executive to do just that. Sony finally confirmed these rumors during its corporate strategy meeting, where Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan said, “We have been thinking about how players enjoy our content and have had some early success with experimenting with mobile games and apps to provide more choice to gamers.”
He added: “Mobile is just one of the areas we are exploring to reach millions of gamers beyond our platforms. PlayStation has a huge catalog of diverse first-party IP that can transition to smartphone gaming and complement our AAA games or live service games. We are exploring the mobile market with some wonderful PlayStation franchises so please stay tuned.” Given how popular mobile gaming has been for Nintendo (and given that Xbox is sort of making it there with Game Pass Cloud options), it’s not a surprise to see Sony leaning in that direction.
I’ll say the same thing now that I said when we first reported on the rumors: While there are some PlayStation titles that might not necessarily make the transition to mobile (not a mobile game anyone would want to play, anyway), there are several games that would do well. Certain Sony franchises that haven’t seen a new entry for a while would make for great mobile games. Personally, I want Sly Cooper and Jak & Daxter back.
Source: Sony
