Sony may be committed to bringing the PlayStation to smartphones, according to a vacancy posted by the company on the Greenhouse vacancy portal. The title of the open position speaks of “Chief of Mobile” and its description lists the “focus on successfully adapting the most popular PlayStation franchises to mobile”.
PlayStation’s efforts for the smartphone market aren’t exactly new: Sony has several derivative apps from its consoles on mobile – an initiative made more popular with the success of the PlayStation 4 . The point is: most of these apps only have the function of mirroring the console’s control panel commands (for example: the “PlayStation App” allows you to use your smartphone as a keyboard or more easily navigate through the menus).
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When it comes to games, ‘Run Sackboy! Run!’, ‘Uncharted: Fortune Hunter’ and the virtual reality (VR) app ‘God of War | Mimir’s Vision’ are some of the examples present on iOS and/or Android . However, these are titles specifically designed for smartphones, not necessarily console games that have gained a “port” to the mobile device.
Remember that Sony already has a “PlayStation Mobile” division, but it is best known for adapting games from the console to the PC, as was the case with ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’, ‘ Days Gone ‘ and ‘Everybody’s gone to the Rapture’. This, of course, without counting their ill-fated efforts to launch smartphones endorsed by the PlayStation division, as was the case with the Xperia Play (2011): the smartphone of the time had a sliding screen that, once opened, revealed a series of joystick buttons for specially adapted titles such as ‘Cool Boarders 2’, ‘Destruction Derby’, ‘MediEvil’ and ‘Syphon Filter’. In the end, the device failed.
It’s been years since Sony abandoned the portable gaming device market: before Xperia Play, the company had the very successful PSP (which even gained a leaner version, called “PSP Go”) and, months after the smartphone, came the PS Vita, with average performance. Entering the mobile gaming market could prove to be a good source of revenue for the company, considering the constant evolution of hardware from smartphone manufacturers. Just ask Nintendo .
Source: Greenhouse (job link)