Sony CEO Kaz Hirai spoke with Financial Times about the company’s plans to get into the mobile gaming market, mentioning Pokemon Go as a motivating factor. “Pokemon Go is a real game-changer,” said Hirai. “I’m very interested in the fact that it has the potential to really change the way people move, literally.”
He admitted it won’t be easy. “It’s quite a shift from being just a console-based business to being on mobile phones as well.”
He’s not kidding. Mobile gaming is far more competitive than console gaming. The barrier to entry is low enough that millions of titles exist at any given time, and being heard in the crowd is dependent entirely on luck and the butterfly effect. Often, your only hope is the power to attach yourself to an already-popular property. Case in point: Pokemon Go was first introduced to the market as a nearly identical game called Ingress, which was largely ignored. Niantic got the interest of The Pokemon Company, rebranded the game and suddenly everyone became aware of it.
Sony has several popular properties, but if they’re expecting any of them to catch on in the same manner that Pokemon Go did, they’re in for a letdown. The mechanics of Pokemon blended perfectly with AR — the game provided people the ability to do something they had always desired to for years. People want to hunt Pokemon, but maybe not Fat Princess, or any of the knockoffs that are inevitably going to show up in the next twelve months.
Sony’s mobile venture was in the works before Pokemon Go was released. A division of the company called ForwardWorks Corporation was announced in March and began operation in April. Currently, all the titles they have in development are scheduled for release only in the Japanese market.
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