Sony, the global electronics and entertainment giant, has decided to wade into the overcrowded mobile gaming space by launching its Playstation Mobile division. The Japanese company has already made its first acquisition in the mobile gaming space — Savage Game Studios.
Savage is an independent studio that has yet to release any game, but Sony has said the studio is presently working on an “unannounced new AAA live service action game”.
Sony's move comes on the back of a difficult couple of years during which it saw disappointing sales of its next-generation gaming console, the PlayStation 5. Beset by chip shortages and supply chain problems caused by the pandemic, Sony has not been able to sell as many consoles as it would have ideally liked, which caused a fair dent in its revenues.
Further, with most new games released on the previous generation PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro, there is not much incentive for gamers to shell out a princely Rs 49,999 for a next-gen console when the PS4 serves their gaming needs perfectly well. Sony did have a presence in the handheld games market with its PSP lineup, but that suffered an ignominious death with when the PSP Vita flopped.
The PS5 was announced in June 2020 and went on sale internationally that November. It made its India debut in February 2021 but still remains out of reach for many, with Sony shipping very limited stock at regular intervals. The few that have managed to snag a PS5 have little to boast of in terms of console exclusivity — a major marketing tool deployed by game console companies to entice users into upgrading their consoles.
While console gaming may have suffered, mobile gaming has become increasingly popular as there is no dearth of handsets out there. Add to that an abundance of mobile games, and you can see why Sony is betting on this space to give it a leg up.
To further boost its user base, Sony in a statement said, its PlayStation Mobile Division "will largely focus on developing mobile games based on existing PlayStation portfolios".
This is the latest in a series of acquisitions made by tech giants over the past year or so, with Microsoft memorably purchasing Activision Blizzard for an eyewatering $70 billion. The Xbox major had earlier bought out Bethesda Softworks, a studio best known for its Elder Scrolls and Fallout game franchises.
Earlier this year, a study by KPMG projected a 113 percent increase in the size of the Indian mobile gaming industry by 2025 and a 51 percent increase in user base. As per the report, the Indian mobile gaming industry raked in a revenue of Rs 136 billion, or Rs 13,600 crore, last year and is projected to earn Rs 290 billion, or Rs 29,000 crore, by 2024-25. Internationally too, the global mobile gaming industry was valued at nearly $100 billion in 2021.
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