Sony Company has decided to close its mixing of traditional portable gaming and Android. On Tuesday, the company on their support forum announced that Sony will no longer be distributing PlayStation Mobile content after 15th July. The company also announced that the re-downloading of purchased apps and In-app purchases of the content will be ceased after 10th September.
PlayStation Mobile
The mobile was officially launched in 2012 and expected to become the answer for the Sony Company to the tremendous growth that has been seen in the world of mobile gaming on different platforms like Android and iOS. This service allowed the users to access the PlayStation content on the company’s PlayStation Vita portable gaming device apart from PlayStation Certified Android devices. The users were not only access these contents but they were able to play the games on both the devices. From the company’s point of view, this move was to latch on to the evolving gaming landscape instead to try to compete against the gaming change.
As expected, this effort from the company turned out to be a disaster and troubled, Sony Company failed to attract enough gamers and developers that were ready for the device that did not have the platform support. The company’s own products, a few of their mobile handsets came to their rescue, which were actually able to support PlayStation Mobile. However, none of these products was popular among the customers. Still everyone can understand the reason why company tried their hands on this gaming world by targeting the android users. Over the years there has been massive evolution and shift in the gaming world, the gamers are now turned towards iOS and Android in large numbers rather than sticking to their old devices and be enthralled by portables like Sony and Nintendo.
According to the research conducted by Newzoo in 2014 confirmed the news that Apple’s iOS platform could generate $4 billion in the revenue and Google’s Android platform would be able to score $3 billion in revenue. On the other hand, according to Newzoo, the revenue generated by Nintendo’s game in October was about $2.4 billion in the previous year. The research firm confirmed that the revenue is decreasing from consoles.
Even though the company was not able to strike a chord with their PlayStation Mobile, their PlayStation business is going very strong in the market and seen an increase in the sales worldwide. Sony’s gaming division reported that there sales increased by 16.8 percent during the quarter ending at December 31. This success has prompted Sony to concentrate on their key component- game to rebuild their underperforming business. In the coming years, PlayStation business, apart from Sony Music and Sony pictures will play a very important part in the company’s business. According to Sony by 2018, they will be able to invest large amounts in these areas, convert the profits, and increase their operating cost to over $4.2 billion.
The company is planning to cut down the businesses which are underperforming and this might include PlayStation Mobile.
