Update: Two is better than one – or so the saying goes. Sony has replaced the leadership at the top of its fledgling mobile gaming division with two co-heads, as spotted by infamous LinkedIn snoop Zuby Tech. Ex-Meta product manager Olivier Courtemanche will be joined by former Kabam bigwig Kris Davis in the role.
Kabam, for those of you who don’t know, is a massive, massive mobile gaming company, responsible for games like Disney Mirrorverse and Marvel Contest of Champions. It seems like appropriate talent to replace Nicola Sebastiani, then, who was headhunted by Sony to lead this initiative from Apple.
Original Article: Sony has been slowly building up a new division under its PlayStation umbrella responsible for bringing its brands to smartphones, but Nicola Sebastiani – a former Apple Arcade executive who was headhunted by the Japanese giant to spearhead the charge – has already left the company to “pursue a new, undisclosed opportunity”.
Sebastiani joined less than two years ago, and had a hand in the division’s acquisition of Savage Game Studios, a developer currently working on Sony’s first “AAA mobile live service action game”. Now, however, it’ll need to find a replacement to fill the veteran’s role as it seeks to get its fledgling smartphone initiative off the ground.
PlayStation is eager to get its brands in front of more eyeballs. Recently it’s launched a number of new initiatives, such as PS Productions which oversaw HBO’s television adaptation of The Last of Us. It’s also committed to bringing its exclusives to PC. The company believes that these tactics will introduce new audiences to its franchises, ultimately increasing recognition and sales.
[source mobilegamer.biz]
Comments 31
I’m still looking forward to the day some mobile games get made by Sony, with care, and connected to PSN so we can also play the trophy metagame.
Really doesn’t look like it’s happening though. Lost count of the number of years I’ve been waiting.
@thefourfoldroot1 Trophies are unlikely, but I agree, it'd be good to get some actually quality mobile games from them.
@BeerIsAwesome Definitely seems like it. Was thinking the same thing.
Sony have hired a few big mobile names in the last few years (one of them was at META for 9 months only before jumping to Sony).
People can be lured to new positions. Sometimes it works for you, sometimes against you.
"WTF no Knack mobile game? OUT!"
@NEStalgia I can't wait until the PS4 is retro enough that we get a PS4 mini console, and the only two games it comes with is Knack 1 and 2.
@get2sammyb
I’m sure the geniuses at Sony can get it to work. Their infrastructure is second to none after all, lol!
But, honestly, no trophies no buy for me. Would just feel lacking at this point (niche view I know).
Seems pointless to even have this division. Bringing big sony ip to phones is a bad fit. Create something new to the platform maybe, but what's the point? While there is some overlap with mobile gaming, with things like cod mobile, fortnite, and minecraft, its not really an ideal model. At best they could take their games and just straight up port them over. Use the phone as it's own mini pc. I don't play these games on my phone like a traditional mobile game. Touch screens are terrible for gaming beyond simple trinkets. So either evolve that underpowered market or stay out of it. That means trophies and making the games bigger than what mobile is known for. Even then you have to deal with the legal mess epic and others have had to deal with on iPhone and Android.
Remote play and cloud is their best options beyond that. The former already working great. So why bother with anything else.
It is hard to get Mobile off the ground, both MS and Sony are finding this out, hence MS is trying to buy ABK, it’s really about King. COD and others can stay multi platform, they just want the candy crush money from King and the mobile storefront, over years that makes more money than consoles could ever think of. Not sure what the next steps for Sony is cause they can’t just buy out a large mobile team. I am sure Sony will think of something eventually cause Mobile crushes everything in dollars. They aren’t going to just give up.
@Green-Bandit When all of this acquisition malarky first started I thought Sony would go after Square Enix for mobile and movie/anime IP, rather than to expand their first party library on console.
Square have a decent presence on mobile so it would be a foot in the door for Sony.
@BeerIsAwesome I've wondered this myself - Sony has other divisions with very successful mobile projects.
Why not push all of these divisions under a Sony Mobile Gaming brand or something like that?
lol at the thought of Spencer in a Good Will Hunting scenario at Sony.
Sony Mobile output has been so bad.
The new sackboy game was a clone of a 10 year old game that had its heyday. I'm not sure how anyone greenlit that thing.
I'm all for chasing mobile trends since that's what the market does, but at least copy a recent trend or make it a quality game. There's a level of polish and depth I expect from the Sony IPs, not a cheap knock off with 10 minutes of value.
Everyone wants their slice of mobile because mobile makes like 6x the revenue of the entire console industry combined, but nobody that tries to enter seems to realize that out of the thousands of companies in mobile, like 10 actually make most of that money, and they're already entrenched, and their whales are already locked to them.
@Shepherd_Tallon makes sense, the rumors of Sony buying Square were hot for a while. Now it’s looking less and less likely. I mean they still get most of their biggest games anyways. But having them in house couldn’t hurt.
@NEStalgia Bingo! Hence MS is like we will just buy King as that’s about the best starting point into Mobile as one could hope for. Sony needs a lot of money or time to really get into mobile and see it start to make money. They may just see it as too much a risk and focus on console and cloud.
@thefourfoldroot1 I think the bigger issue may be people hacking the games with Android or something. Obviously it's not a platform/ecosystem they can control.
Sounds like he's staying mobile
It doesn’t even need live service titles. They could comfortably port the entire PSP library to mobile with save states, rewind/FF and touchscreen controls.
PPSSPP is perfectly playable on most Android devices and iOS would run it easily. Make every game free with an IAP unlock to get around piracy.
Charge £8/$10 a pop and you’re golden.
Don’t take that as it must be going rough people, probably found a better opportunity for his career
It's pretty funny how Playstation and Microsoft seem to be struggling to launch their IPs in the mobile space, whereas several of Nintendo's IPs are currently tearing it up there.
Uncharted would make sense for a Temple Run-style experience. And, tbh, they should really be trying to synchronize their mobile and live service efforts. Titles like Genshin Impact are huge partially because of their presence on mobile devices.
@get2sammyb
I’m sure, as a completely uninformed person, that there must be some way around it if the will is there. I can already access PSN on my phone via the app or website after all.
Hell, they can even go old school and text me a code every time I meet the requirements of a trophy which I can then redeem through PSN as long as it is on the correct PlayStation account.
@Green-Bandit Money is an issue but the biggest issue for Sony is just the total clash in their approach to how mobile works. It's just wholly incompatible. They've really fused their traditional entertainment media industries into their gaming business and that's been their formula for success. Mobile is this whole weird fast and loose sort of data model approach to gaming and it will never really work unless they have a whole different business arm with a whole different corporate culture for it.
I think it'll also be a bottleneck for their whole GaaS approach on console, too. It's a very different business based on very different things than what they know how to do and just gaining talent to "learn" these other businesses doesn't substitute for a whole structure that doesn't lend to it.
Granted, I'm neither a fan of the mobile/data/service model NOR the "games as movies" model so I keep waiting for them to find that third path, but for the status quo it's very different things.
@Ralizah That's the difference of branding vs content. PS and Nintendo don't really have "brands", like Volvy level brands that can be turned into breakfast cereal easily. PS and XB are trying to sell to mobile games that are popular because they're games that are known to be fun games. Nintendo is selling "Mario brand interactive thing" screw the game. It happens to also be a good game, but people start it because "Mario brand" "FE brand". Sony and MS left the mascot behind and it kind of hurts in mobile. Sega's eating them alive in mobile for that reason. Sega!
Genshin's Huge MOSTLY due to mobile. It's a P2W Gatcha service. If it were console only it'd be dead. Even with catgirl.
I heard Al-Nassar have signed him to play up front with Ronaldo. £467 million over 2 years.
Put trophy integration in the mobile games and i’ll play every single one.
Until then, no thanks.
Haha this is hilarious. Hope this fails for Sony just like there live service initiative.
Do people actually play mobile games? I genuinely can't name a single person that does it.
@Bamila Most of the population worldwide? Most console/PC gamers aren't likely to because they wouldn't have bought a console/PC if they loved mobile gaming. But the mobile market is many times larger than the console market. Predominantly among people that otherwise don't play console games. Which is most people.
It's a shame that we're going to miss out on a cookie cutter endless runner and some base building game with timers that stretch into weeks and months. How could they do this to us?
@NEStalgia i agree that Sony’s current structure is what works and is working on Mobile. We’ve talked before about why people fail on mobile and I agree with it. Sony has a good model now that is working, i ask this question as i start to see more of what they would like to do, and that’s are Sony in risk of spreading themselves out to thin. Can they handle Mobile, PC Cloud and Console? Or should they stick to what they know and what they do best. Sony as this site likes to say so often don’t have MS money. But what i try and remind others on this site is it’s more than the money its the infrastructure. MS has spent the better of 4-5 years now branching the Xbox into a multi platform ecosystem and it takes time and money. Yet still MS has zero footprint on mobile, unless they get King. I just question if this is too much for Sony, their live service games need to come out swinging or players are going to put another shift on PS as they will demand better games. Much like the Xbox controller, sometimes it’s best to not fix what isn’t broken.
After that wipeout rush card game on mobile, I have no hope for playstation mobile division lol.
It is a bit surprising that Sony hasn't really dipped it's toes in the mobile market. Perhaps they should divert all their games as a service garbage there and continue to make quality and completed titles on console.
@Bamila
Mobile gaming is a much bigger market than you think.
I tried dozens of games myself and I particularly don't want to do anything with most games.
There are many scams/pay-to-win/ "free" games which ruined my experience.
But I also found a few (and it is rare) which are great. (both free and paid versions).
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