Sony wants 20 percent of new games to be on smartphones<\/a> by 2025, and last August it announced a new PlayStation Studios Mobile Division<\/a> to help make that happen. But you should know that what Sony\u2019s building doesn\u2019t <\/em>look like a new game studio that will produce its own games, nor, say, a way to port Sony\u2019s biggest games to phones the way they\u2019re getting ported to PC<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 17 current and former job postings suggest that PlayStation Studios Mobile is more of a cross-functional management, strategy, licensing, and support team. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n They figure what PlayStation intellectual property would best fit a mobile phone, help dish out that licensed IP to internal and external<\/em> game studios alike, oversee the titles, make sure the final games live up to Sony\u2019s expectations \u2014 and maybe invest or even acquire external developers if there\u2019s strategic value in it. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here\u2019s the description for a Senior External Producer role, for example:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Be an ambassador for PlayStation, collaborating with top mobile game developers in evaluating, producing and releasing PlayStation Studios Mobile games at the highest level of quality, on time and on budget.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n And many roles ask prospective employees to have a \u201cproven track record\u201d with free-to-play games specifically. I\u2019ve only seen one game designer role<\/a> so far, and its primary responsibility is: \u201cSupport game design for internal projects and provide consultation for projects with external partners on mobile F2P systems, economy management and retention features.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Tried and true, at least for console<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Leaning on external studios wouldn\u2019t be surprising: it\u2019s a formula that\u2019s worked for Sony in the past. Many lauded first-party and<\/em> third-party games have come out of Sony\u2019s PlayStation Studios (formerly Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios), even if Sony did briefly try to pretend<\/a> the brand was solely about its own first-party exclusives when the PS5 first launched. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Besides, this is the third time Sony\u2019s tried to get smartphone gaming off the ground, following its failed PlayStation Mobile platform<\/a> and its WayForward studio<\/a> that\u2019s only produced two games (Everybody\u2019s Golf<\/em> and Disgaea RPG<\/em>) specifically for the Japanese market. (Sony was also preparing to bring its PlayStation Now cloud gaming service to phones, I discovered in 2021<\/a>, but let\u2019s not count that since Sony never announced it.) <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some of the postings describe the group as a \u201csmall but quickly growing team\u201d where employees will \u201cwear many hats and contribute to the nascent culture for mobile game design at PlayStation Studios while championing the efforts across the company.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The job postings do make it seem like there\u2019s real interest in tapping Sony\u2019s internal studios to produce the games, too, should those efforts be championed successfully. The company\u2019s head of mobile product describes his job as including both externally and internally developed titles: <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Responsible for delivery of PlayStation Studios quality mobile titles, including internally developed within existing & acquired studios and externally developed via licensing, co-development and co-publishing partnerships.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Most current roles are for product managers and external producers in San Mateo and Amsterdam; the company\u2019s also hiring a Director of Mobile Engineering<\/a> and a product strategy analyst. Previously, Sony also went looking for a finance manager<\/a>, directors of mobile product management<\/a>, business development<\/a> and studio operations<\/a>, and a Korean translator<\/a> in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n According to their LinkedIn pages, Sony\u2019s hires currently appear to include:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We\u2019re definitely eager to see what they come up with. Sony has previously said that Savage Game Studios, the first group that PlayStation acquired to produce mobile games, already has \u201ca new unannounced AAA mobile live service action game\u201d in the works. Their<\/em> job postings show they\u2019re looking for experience with the Unreal Engine. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
\n
\n