Combine that with the huge explosion of Nintendo’s Pokémon GO, which reportedly raked in $440 million in a matter of months, and it’s easy to see why Sony made a decision to give mobile gaming another try.
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“[Mobile gaming] is something we are aggressively getting into”, Hirai said.
It looks like Sony is making a major new push to create its own mobile games, with Sony boss Kaz Hirai specifically naming Pokémon GO as the inspiration for the new initiative.
“It’s quite a shift from being just a console-based business to being on mobile phones as well”, Hirai added. We will just have to wait and see what Sony plans to do, as it is likely that they will spread to other countries since Pokemon Go has shown just how big one mobile application can be world wide. The game’s success sent Nintendo’s stock soaring, until the company reminded investors that it owned less than 20% of the game thanks to the complicated rights of the Pokemon franchise and profit sharing with Niantic Labs, the actual developer of the game.
Hirai makes pretty clear why that’s the case: “Pokémon Go is a real game-changer”, he explained.
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The CEO then went on to extol the virtues of augmented or mixed reality, and how the technology has the potential to “lift all boats for the video game industry”. If anything is announced, it will probably come from ForwardWorks, a subsidiary Sony opened earlier this year to focus exclusively on the mobile market and how it can bring popular PlayStation properties to smart devices. Sony has also tried (and failed) to mimic Nintendo’s successes before, with products such as the PlayStation Move. Other publishers have already been taking note of the game, and of its success- and one of those companies include Nintendo’s competitor Sony.
