Sony to bring popular PlayStation titles to Apple's iOS in Asia and Japan

Like its rival Nintendo, Sony appears to be taking a soft approach to the lucrative smartphone gaming market, announcing on Thursday that it will bring some PlayStation titles to iPhone gamers in Japan and Asia.

Sony will undertake this initiative with a new company it has formed called ForwardWorks. In a press release, Sony said 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."

The goal of ForwardWorks is to give gamers the ability to "casually enjoy full-fledged game titles." The division also plans to "deploy new services" on both iOS and Android.

Previously, Sony attempted to crack into the mobile gaming market with its PlayStation Mobile development kit for Android, as well as the Xperia Play phone. Sony also sells the PlayStation Vita dedicated gaming handheld, but has failed to compete with Nintendo's market leading 3DS in that space.

Nintendo launched its own iPhone game, "Miimoto," earlier this month. Much like Sony's plans, Nintendo's first iOS title remains region locked, for now, to Japan.

Console makers Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have seen a tumultuous few years after Apple's iPhone, iPad and iOS App Store ushered in the era of bite-sized mobile gaming. With developers focused on iOS, Android and other mobile platforms, traditional console makers have been largely relegated to the living room, the main exception being Nintendo's 3DS.

Sony did announce last fall that it plans to allow PlayStation 4 gamers to stream titles to Mac, as well as Windows PCs. Sony's Remote Play feature uses a local Internet connection to stream gameplay video, processed by the console.

5 Comments

franktinsley 163 comments · 15 Years

About 8 years ago

IT'S HAPPENING

cali 3494 comments · 10 Years

Apple TV?

davidmalcolm 402 comments · 9 Years

Final Fantasy 7 and 9 are already on iOS. Only other PS game I could think of wanting would be Chrono Cross.

Marvin 15335 comments · 18 Years

davidmalcolm said:

Final Fantasy 7 and 9 are already on iOS. Only other PS game I could think of wanting would be Chrono Cross.

Sony would only really be able to port titles they'd developed or published, possibly PS exclusives. Square Enix makes the above games:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chrono-trigger/id479431697?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/square-enix-inc/id300186801?mt=8

They might do Chrono Cross later, developers sometimes port titles in chronological order so that more advanced games perform well enough on a broad range of devices.

Sony has some titles already:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/playstation-mobile-inc./id912472174

Ratchet and Clank is probably the closest to a typical Playstation game but they made it another endless runner style game. The new studio they have made is geared towards Japan and Asia. There's a Japanese studio GungHo that made one of those puzzle matching games and it took off in Japan:

http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/31/puzzle-dragons-huge-profits-explain-why-square-enix-has-20-new-mobile-games-in-2014/
http://toucharcade.com/2015/09/29/can-puzzle-and-dragons-become-huge-in-the-west-starting-with-a-tv-ad-campaign/

To make over $1b from a single title is too good for games studios to pass up. Sony might aim for the JRPG genre, which would explain their focus on Asian markets:

http://www.listal.com/list/jrpgs-on-playstation-3

because that would lend itself to long playing times and micro-transactions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePp3Tm-4Ej4

A single studio targeting mobile wouldn't be able to deliver many high quality titles, they could only ever make a handful of titles every year. There's no harm in Sony and Nintendo experimenting with mobile to see how they can take advantage of it but I don't think they'll deliver what mobile gamers are expecting, which is to use it as a platform in the same way the 3DS and PSP were used.

mcfrazieriv 71 comments · 10 Years

Another CEO looking at meeting and exceeding profits during tenure to secure performance based bonuses with little care for user experience and future product longevity.

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