Sony To Aggressively Move Into Mobile Gaming After Pokemon Go's Success

At least one other major video game developer is looking towards mobile gaming thanks to Pokemon Go. In an interview with the Financial Times, Sony's Kaz Harai confirmed that the Playstation maker was reconsidering its mobile gaming strategy thanks to the success of Nintendo's Pokemon Go. "[Mobile gaming] is something we are aggressively getting into", Hirai said. "It's quite a shift from being just a console-based business to being on mobile phones as well."

Pokemon Go has earned an estimated $440 million in revenue since its release in early July and brings in about $4 million a day. 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. Nintendo also has several other mobile games in the work, which should be released later this year.

Harai hailed Pokemon Go as a game changer, both in how Nintendo was able to successfully move into the mobile gaming market and in that it pushed millions to walk around while playing video games. Pokemon Go places an emphasis on exploration and communities around the world suddenly discovered that their public places filled with gamers on their phones.

Sony already has a dedicated mobile developer called ForwardWorks, which was set up to create mobile games featuring various PlayStation exclusive titles. However, thanks to Pokemon Go, Sony now wants ForwardWorks to implement augmented reality aspects into its games. Whether this means location based games or some sort of camera feature is unclear.

This won't be Sony's first move into mobile gaming. The company previously rolled out a "PlayStation Mobile" software that worked on both the PlayStation Vita and Android devices, but Sony cancelled the service due to a lack of interest last year. Sony has also tried (and failed) to mimic Nintendo's successes before, with products such as the PlayStation Move.

Sony has their Tokyo Game Show scheduled for next week, and it's possible that the company could announce their first foray into mobile gaming there. Even if they don't, it's clear that traditional video game developers are looking increasingly to mobile games as the future.

(via The Financial Times)