PlayStation’s Andrew House Sees Limited Potential for Handheld Gaming

The PlayStation Boss Says Sony Will Focus on the Living Room and Mobile Devices

In a recent interview at TGS 2017, Sony’s President of the gaming division, Andrew House, stated that the handheld gaming market outside of Japan and Asia to have a huge marketing opportunity. That said, he, of course, acknowledged the impressive success of Nintendo Switch, but also noted that the Nintendo console was more of a hybrid console with a different strategy rather than simply a handheld system. The interview hints that Sony, internally, has no PS Vita successor aspirations nor desire to challenge the Switch in the handheld space.

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Instead, Sony’s gaming division is banking on dominating the living room through an all-encompassing PS4 which serves up gaming, VR, and entertainment too. Beyond that, the article also added that Sony’s mobile games unit, ForwardWorks, is doing “fantastic”, according to House. That unit is making its first wave mobile games directed at Japanese audiences with two RPGs, Arc the Lad and Wild ARMS, and even a new Parappa the Rapper game too. House believes smartphones will eventually be the de facto platforms for portable gaming.

On the Switch’s success, he mentioned that the hybrid console’s success hasn’t impacted Sony’s console or hardware sales. His conclusion was that the Switch has been more additive to the business as opposed to direct competition. “The folks at Nintendo have their strategy and that’s great. We remain focused around a highly connected gaming experience and also coupled with having a great range of other entertainment experiences so you can reach multiple people on the big screen in the household,” said House.

With TGS 2017 in the rearview mirror, we still have the annual PlayStation Experience this December to look forward to for huge Sony gaming announcements.

Source: Bloomberg