Sony has had quite a good set of years when it comes to gaming. They still are the king of the hill compared to their competition for manufacturing game hardware. The PS4 has contributed a lot in putting them back on track with the numbers. But success comes at a price, they needed to bail out on the PS Vita, leaving it on the capable hands of independent developers, so that they can concentrate more on PS4. Due to this, they even have enough resources to pull together two new products: PS VR and PS4 Pro.
At this point, you would say, "ah, Sony's on top now, they should maintain that by not doing anything stupid." I'm sorry to disappoint you but I think they still have one more market to check out, and more or less stupid things need to be done to conquer. And by stupid, I meant abandoning hardware just like what they did to the PS Vita which I worked hard to save for just to find out that it will no longer have first-party titles coming.
Anyway, back to the unconquered region, Sony also would want to reign over the smartphone games industry. Why? Because other companies are successful on that market, and this is business. Seriously, Sony saw the potential because of recent success such as Pokemon Go among other awesome games and now the smartphone market becomes tempting. Who doesn't find 500 million downloads attractive, right? The only question now is that will Sony triumph over Nintendo again? Just like what they did with the Playstation over whatever Nintendo console it came against back then?
Why Sony will have a hard time with smartphone games?
Well, despite the yummy temptation of revenue reports for Pokemon Go, again its 500 million downloads, smartphone games market is still unstable. Even Nintendo didn't fully give in to the smartphone games industry by deciding the Nintendo Switch to be a hybrid of console and handheld, ergo catering a wide range of gamers, not just casual smartphone players. Sony might be king in terms of console gaming but there are a lot of stuff to be learned in the mobile games market. Personally I would say re-skinning games would be their mortal enemy as it is very rampant in the mobile games world. But who knows, maybe Sony will pull it off with proper planning.
What are Sony's planned games for smartphones?
Sony has ForwardWorks, a sub company of theirs, on it. They promise to give five or more smartphone games prior to March of 2018. What games are they, you ask? As of this writing, no official statement has been released about the game titles coming out from Sony for the smartphone games market. Via speculation, I would say they will be spin-offs of famous Sony exclusive games like that Golden Abyss thing they did for Uncharted under PS Vita. Some games I can think of are Crash Bandicoot, Little Big Planet, Infamous, and Knack. Even The Last of Us will have a cool spin-off game like an RTS or something like Clash of Clans but set in a Sony game universe. And, yeah, there are ideas for God of War mobile phone games.
Is this strategy a way to give Sony smartphones a comeback in the industry as well?
Most probably, yes, and, why not? Introducing your own hardware to the concerned market is a great strategy. If Sony succeeds in the smartphone games industry, why not throw in their already existing Xperia phones in the process, right?
