Mobile gaming is becoming more lucrative every year, even though we rarely see games ported straight from consoles and PC. Instead, publishers have focused on creating new mobile-focused titles based on massive franchises, like Pokémon Go, Mario Kart Tour, and Fallout Shelter. Nintendo has released a steady stream of games on iOS and Android over the past few years, and it now seems that Sony wants to create mobile games for some of its most popular PlayStation franchises.
A job posting spotted last month hinted that Sony wanted to push its PlayStation brand into mobile gaming, and today's news is further evidence that Sony is serious about this push. In the company's recent corporate strategy meeting (via Android Authority), the company mentioned that the Fate/Grand Order anime combat game released on iOS and Android in 2015 continues to be a success, and Sony "will further focus on deploying PlayStationʼs proprietary IP to mobile." Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, later said, "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."
Sony didn't specify any of the games currently in development or if work has started at all. Sony previously operated the PlayStation Mobile platform, which powered various Android and Vita games, but it was shut down in 2015. Besides Fate/Grand Order, the company also published a puzzle game in 2016 based on the Uncharted series, but it didn't seem to be much of a success — the game hasn't been updated since 2016 and has less than 5 million downloads on the Google Play Store. Run Sackboy! Run! was published a year earlier, based on LittleBigPlanet. Sony has a lot of IPs it could pull from for a few mobile game series, but we'll have to wait and see what's in store. Hopefully, the games won't be riddled with too many microtransactions.
Featured image: Ratchet & Clank