Mobile is quickly becoming the next growth avenue for giants in the gaming segment. Over the past few years, we have seen multiple acclaimed PC and console game franchises making their way to the mobile platform, with some of the most well-known success stories being Fortnite, PUBG Mobile, and Call of Duty: Mobile. Microsoft brought its portfolio of Xbox games to mobile with xCloud, while Google is trying to grab a piece of the pie with Stadia via cloud-based game streaming. Now, Sony has announced plans of bringing some iconic PlayStation franchises to smartphones. 

Sony aims to widen its audience by bringing iconic PlayStation IP to mobile

Speaking during the Investor Relation Day event, Sony’s PlayStation division boss Jim Ryan revealed that the company will make steps to bring PlayStation titles to mobile this year. “2021 will also see us take steps to bring PlayStation IP to mobile, with the opportunity to dramatically increase audience sizes that this brings,” Ryan said. You can hear him talking about it at the 22:25 mark in the webcast recording here.

“In FY21 we will begin to publish some of our iconic PlayStation IP on mobile and we anticipate that in 2021, that will not provide a significant profit flow, but we do anticipate that as we learn from that experience, and as we increase the number of titles that we publish on mobile, the contribution from both PC and mobile will start to become steadily more important as time passes.”

Per a report from VideoGameChronicles, the Sony executive plans to transition the sizeable catalog of its first-party IP over to the mobile platform. Sony has some well-known names such as God of War, The Last Of Us, and Uncharted under its belt that could be a smash hit on the mobile platform if done well. However, the company is yet to reveal which games it plans to bring over to the mobile ecosystem.

While cloud-based game streaming brings the console experience to mobile, it is still limited in its reach and hasn’t really exploded despite the appeal of playing AAA games on your mobile or tablet. However, porting those games for Android and iOS ensures that they are easily accessible and better optimized without many caveats.