Whether Sony had intended to get into the mobile game market prior to Nintendo’s entry last weekend where it announced that its first mobile app, Militomo, claimed a million users in three days is anyone’s guess. But it was made clear that the company would begin introducing PS titles to mobile users soon.
Creation of new company to serve PlayStation games to iOS and Android
Sony announced today that the new entity, ForwardWorks Corporation, would begin operations beginning on April 1.
“ForwardWorks will leverage the intellectual property of the numerous PlayStation dedicated software titles and its gaming characters as well as the knowledge and know-how of gaming development expertise which was acquired over the years with PlayStation business to provide gaming application optimized for smart devices including smartphones to users in Japan and Asia,” the statement said.
While that’s quite quick and quite possible a response to Nintendo, no time table for its first mobile games was given nor did the company give any indication of what titles or characters might make the trip over to the mobile side of the gaming world.
It would be the acme of folly for Sony and now ForwardWorks to not leverage its large library of games. This is especially the case given the recent success of Nintendo’s Militomo last week. Militomo and another four titles are expected from Nintendo before the end of the year through a partnership with the mobile company DeNA, which was announced in 2015.
Angry Birds players and “casual gamers”
There are millions of people, myself included, that will play a mobile game while on the bus or waiting in a doctor’s waiting room but will never splash hundreds of dollars on a console system or become a “proper gamer” wasting/spending hours playing Grand Theft Auto or Madden despite what I’ve seen from these games.
Coming to age in the 1980s mean that I saw Sony in all areas of consumer electronics, that just doesn’t exist anymore. Sony still releases other products but it’s clear that its bread is buttered with gaming and reaching the mobile gamer or “casual gamer” is key.
Sony has also announced that Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) will change its name to Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), effective from April 1.
