Sony establishes a PlayStation Mobile branch and has big hopes for smartphones.

Author

SB

Date

Aug, 30.2022

The bigger news may be that Sony is planning a huge push into mobile gaming, consistent with current efforts to attract PC gamers with its AAA intellectual rights. Sony has bought mobile game developer Savage Game Studios and will incorporate it into its PlayStation Studios portfolio. 

Hermen Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios, said in a statement on Monday morning that "Our mobile gaming efforts will be similarly additive," referencing the recent PC releases of Marvel's Spider-Man and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection. Savage Game Studios will be a part of the new PlayStation Studios Mobile Division, which will function separately from our console development and concentrate on cutting-edge, on-the-go experiences based on new and current PlayStation IP. 

Therefore, this doesn't seem to be the same as moving current console games to mobile platforms, which is a strategy that presumably benefits more from cloud streaming (and PlayStation Plus does not yet support streaming games to mobile devices). Michael Katkoff of Savage Game Studios stated in the same statement from Monday that the possibility to draw from PlayStation's incredible library of IP and the fact that they will gain from the kind of support that only PlayStation can deliver. 

Savage Game Studios is reportedly "already working on a new, unannounced AAA mobile live service action game," according to Hulst. Although it's too soon to say more, I can't wait until they can. 

Incorporated in 2020, Savage Game Studios has offices in Berlin and Helsinki. It hasn't yet released any games, mobile or otherwise. The studio disclosed that it was creating a shooter for mobile devices in January 2021 when it raised $4.4 million in seed investment. 

Sony shut down its last significant mobile project in 2015, despite the situation was very different at the time. PlayStation Mobile began in 2012 and shut down its Android support two years later. PlayStation Mobile served as a development, shop, and support system for independent games on Android devices and the doomed PlayStation Vita. 

Otherwise, very few PlayStations IPs have made the transition to mobile. A week or so before Uncharted 4: A Thief's End on PlayStation 4 premiered, the puzzle game Uncharted: Fortune Hunter and the endless runner Run Sackboy were both released on Android and iOS. LittleBigPlanet 3 and run! both released on mobile platforms on the same day. 

Similar to other companies, Nintendo has a history of being reluctant to bring its properties to mobile devices. However, in 2015, the corporation finally gave in and announced a partnership with Japanese mobile developer DeNA. The result of that combination was the 2016 release of Super Mario Run, the 2019 release of Mario Kart Tour, and the short-lived Dr. Mario World, which closed in November 2021.