Sony Continues to Plan Big After Discord Investment by Bringing PlayStation Exclusives to Smartphones

Sony plans to touch all bases in the gaming industry. For decades, the company has ruled the console market with its state-of-the-art hardware. It has constantly complimented the sales of PlayStation consoles with a long list of exclusive IPs. However, since the past few months, the tech giant has been making massive strides to expand its gaming initiatives.

PlayStation recently invested in the texting and voice app, Discord, a necessity for mobile gamers. The investment marked Sony’s first step towards its entry into the mobile gaming market. However, the console manufacturers want to do more for smartphone gamers. Sony’s idea is to “make PlayStation more social”, and expanding to handheld devices is one way to do it.

PlayStation CEO confirms mobile gaming plans

Sony’s CEO, Kenichiro Yoshida, recently laid the foundation of the company’s expansion to the mobile gaming market. During a recent meeting, he established how “crucial” expanding to mobile is for its social plans. PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan later built upon these ideas, further expanding on how the console makers actually plan to establish their presence in the new market.

Sony saw positive reception following its investment in Discord. After taking care of the social aspect of the expansion, all that remains is delivering IP to mobile gamers. While PlayStation has previously experimented in the sphere, as it expands its vision, it feels ready to introduce some of its exclusive titles to smartphones.

“We have been thinking about how players enjoy our content and have had some early success with experimenting with mobile games and apps to provide more choices to gamers. Mobile is just one of the areas we are exploring to reach millions of gamers beyond our platforms.”

Sony to join other gaming companies expanding into mobile

Various AAA developers such as Ubisoft, Rockstar Games, EA, and Activision have already expanded or are planning to expand to the mobile gaming industry. The industry houses millions of customers, and this is a popular market these days. Even industry analysts recognize the space as a cash cow as it’s twice as big as the console market.

“PlayStation has a huge catalog of diverse first-party IP that can transition to smartphone gaming and complement our AAA games or live service games. We are exploring the mobile market with some wonderful PlayStation franchises, so please stay tuned.”

Considering the size of the market and the resources available to Sony, it wouldn’t be long before we see the likes of first-party and third-party exclusives come to mobile phones.

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