E3 2012: Sony partnering with HTC for 'PlayStation Mobile' Android gaming
Sony revealed on Monday at E3 that it is partnering up with Taiwanese handset maker HTC for the first non-Sony devices to feature its newly-renamed "PlayStation Mobile" Android gaming platform.
During a keynote presentation at E3 2012 in Los Angeles, Calif., Sony announced that it was changing the name of its fledgling PlayStation Suite platform to PlayStation Mobile to "reflect the mobility of the PlayStation experience," The Verge reports. The company first unveiled its plans for the Android game store last January.
Sony said that response to its PlayStation Suite beta, which began in April, has been "nothing short of phenomenal."
"Very soon we will be bringing the PlayStation experience to Android tablets and smartphones in a major way," the company added. "We have many PS Certified phones coming to market this year."
The electronics maker outed HTC as its first "non-Sony group partner" for the platform. HTC enjoyed early success on the Android platform, but it has struggled in recent months. In April, the vendor announced that profits had fallen 70 percent in the first quarter of 2012 "because of competition from the iPhone 4S."
Most recently, HTC experienced some delays in shipping its handsets to the U.S., a market that used to account for more than half of the company's revenue. The customs review was prompted by an injunction that Apple had won against HTC via a lawsuit with the International Trade Commission.
With the PlayStation Mobile platform, Sony is taking a pronged approach to reasserting its mobile gaming prowess. For years, Sony's gaming arm held a large chunk of the industry's profits, but the increasing popularity of smartphone and tablet gaming has begun to quickly erode that share. Sony fought back with the release of its PlayStation Vita handheld last year, but the device has so far only encountered middling demand.
During a recent earnings call, Sony revealed that it had sold 1.8 million Vitas as of March 2012. Sony expects to sell 16 million handhelds, including its older PSP, over the next fiscal year, which runs until March 2013.
After years of its Mac platform being known as second-rate for gaming, Apple has found a hit with its iOS app ecosystem. CEO Tim Cook said at a conference last week that he believes the company is "big in gaming" with the iPod touch. He added that he wasn't interested in getting into the console business just to be in it, while noting that Apple does want to do what its customers want it to do.
In April, sources claimed that Apple engineers are working on a physical controller for gaming on its mobile devices. One game developer said in March that the arrival of a controller for the iPad would pose a serious challenge to console gaming incumbents like Sony and Microsoft.
Other news items of interest to come out of E3 on Monday include the announcement that the highly-anticipated Counter-Strike: Global Offensive game will arrive on OS X at the same time as Windows, PlayStation and Xbox and Microsoft's unveiling of an AirPlay-like feature called SmartGlass that will tie-in content on iOS devices with Xbox 360 content.
During a keynote presentation at E3 2012 in Los Angeles, Calif., Sony announced that it was changing the name of its fledgling PlayStation Suite platform to PlayStation Mobile to "reflect the mobility of the PlayStation experience," The Verge reports. The company first unveiled its plans for the Android game store last January.
Sony said that response to its PlayStation Suite beta, which began in April, has been "nothing short of phenomenal."
"Very soon we will be bringing the PlayStation experience to Android tablets and smartphones in a major way," the company added. "We have many PS Certified phones coming to market this year."
The electronics maker outed HTC as its first "non-Sony group partner" for the platform. HTC enjoyed early success on the Android platform, but it has struggled in recent months. In April, the vendor announced that profits had fallen 70 percent in the first quarter of 2012 "because of competition from the iPhone 4S."
Most recently, HTC experienced some delays in shipping its handsets to the U.S., a market that used to account for more than half of the company's revenue. The customs review was prompted by an injunction that Apple had won against HTC via a lawsuit with the International Trade Commission.
With the PlayStation Mobile platform, Sony is taking a pronged approach to reasserting its mobile gaming prowess. For years, Sony's gaming arm held a large chunk of the industry's profits, but the increasing popularity of smartphone and tablet gaming has begun to quickly erode that share. Sony fought back with the release of its PlayStation Vita handheld last year, but the device has so far only encountered middling demand.
During a recent earnings call, Sony revealed that it had sold 1.8 million Vitas as of March 2012. Sony expects to sell 16 million handhelds, including its older PSP, over the next fiscal year, which runs until March 2013.
After years of its Mac platform being known as second-rate for gaming, Apple has found a hit with its iOS app ecosystem. CEO Tim Cook said at a conference last week that he believes the company is "big in gaming" with the iPod touch. He added that he wasn't interested in getting into the console business just to be in it, while noting that Apple does want to do what its customers want it to do.
In April, sources claimed that Apple engineers are working on a physical controller for gaming on its mobile devices. One game developer said in March that the arrival of a controller for the iPad would pose a serious challenge to console gaming incumbents like Sony and Microsoft.
Other news items of interest to come out of E3 on Monday include the announcement that the highly-anticipated Counter-Strike: Global Offensive game will arrive on OS X at the same time as Windows, PlayStation and Xbox and Microsoft's unveiling of an AirPlay-like feature called SmartGlass that will tie-in content on iOS devices with Xbox 360 content.
Comments
It is only understandable that such a venture will be undertaken to compete with the massive iPad revolution. The major players in the entertainment industry are forced to change how they understand and perceive the way the developed world connects, works and plays on a digital device.
I still would not compare anything Sony does to the iPad. Even with any other partnership of any giant company. Obviously the industry is in a follow mode for competing with Apple. Maybe in a few years there will be a close to equal. But for now iPad rules the field of Digital Devices for Entertainment and or production.
The gaming console market is dying back faster then the PC tower market. Everything's happening in mobile. The problem Sony has, is that dedicated handheld games is also shrinking. Why carry a dedicated device when an iPhone, or a iPod Touch, or an iPad will do it all, and then some.
Because they don't... not until they grow up some hardware controls.
And yes, I've tried number of games on my iPhone and tablet. Angry Birds type of games, and games controlled by tilting device work nice... but those games were not/are not popular on consoles anyway. Proper shooter, fighting game, sport... no. Just no.
Too late. Waste of money.
Originally Posted by Macky the Macky
The gaming console market is dying back faster then the PC tower market. Everything's happening in mobile. The problem Sony has, is that dedicated handheld games is also shrinking. Why carry a dedicated device when an iPhone, or a iPod Touch, or an iPad will do it all, and then some.
Yeah the iOS devices can play games. But they suck compared to the big name titles like Uncharted or even WoW. Some things are just not meant to happen. iOS games will mainly be for passing time and the toilet. The console market always slows and speeds up. We are in year seven of this current generation of game consoles. When the new consoles are released you will see lines for them and they will be hard to get for several months.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Splash-reverse
Game world is changing and Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo (in that order, Quick->Slow) are just too slow to react.
Yup, too little, too late. HTC + Sony + Android + Gaming = Cool, 5 years ago, maybe.
Why can't Sony just make a decent 1080p gaming console with DX11, Unreal Engine 4-quality graphics. Is that too much to ask?
And yeah, Sony, hang on to those exclusives like God Of War, because that's all you've got left for PS3, a, sad, decrepit gaming console.
I've always liked Sony TVs and LCDs, but why are they losing money on it?
Sony Ericsson. 'Nuff said. It was ~the~ cell phone to get. At one time. Now... *sigh*
Also, impossible to find a decent Sony Bluetooth/Wireless headset. Got a pretty decent Dolby 7.1 Turtle Beach headset instead. Killer stuff.
My favourite childhood brand. Now nothing but a joke.
ATRAC3
Minidisc
CD
CDMP3
MP3
Vaio
BluRay
Sony PCs
HDTV
LCD
3DHDTV
Movies
Music
Cell Phones
....
What went wrong? Each of the above had some decent potential to some degree, and made up a promising tech landscape of the 90's and early 00's. Then...
Quote:
Originally Posted by nvidia2008
Yup, too little, too late. HTC + Sony + Android + Gaming = Cool, 5 years ago, maybe.
Why can't Sony just make a decent 1080p gaming console with DX11, Unreal Engine 4-quality graphics. Is that too much to ask?
And yeah, Sony, hang on to those exclusives like God Of War, because that's all you've got left for PS3, a, sad, decrepit gaming console.
I've always liked Sony TVs and LCDs, but why are they losing money on it?
Sony Ericsson. 'Nuff said. It was ~the~ cell phone to get. At one time. Now... *sigh*
Also, impossible to find a decent Sony Bluetooth/Wireless headset. Got a pretty decent Dolby 7.1 Turtle Beach headset instead. Killer stuff.
My favourite childhood brand. Now nothing but a joke.
ATRAC3
Minidisc
CD
CDMP3
MP3
Vaio
BluRay
Sony PCs
HDTV
LCD
3DHDTV
Movies
Music
Cell Phones
....
What went wrong? Each of the above had some decent potential to some degree, and made up a promising tech landscape of the 90's and early 00's. Then...
Sure the iApple products are great for casual gaming and sure they are widely adopted by the general public, but let's be real here shall we? Most of the games on these tablet type devices are quick fix entertainers and with few genuine gaming ports that cost way more than they should, nothing more than that. Tapping the screen like a pigeon in front of a glass pane is just not the same experience and neither is having to jailbreak a device in order to use it to play a game, or homebrew app, you'll never see ported over anyways due to strangling legal constraints over old code long abandoned by its original developers. There are some gems like Angry Birds in the online stores, but most are clones of oldies presented to the public for a fast buck.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Splash-reverse
Game world is changing and Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo (in that order, Quick->Slow) are just too slow to react.
You have that backward.
uh, where is the news here?
Sony announced its plans to bring the PlayStation Suite (now Mobile) to Android last year. including "certified" Android hardware meeting certain minimum specs. no news there.
ok, HTC has now agreed to be the first to accept this Sony co-branding for some of its new stuff. big deal. like, what took so long?
of some geeky interest is what version of Android will be used. originally Sony announced support for Android 2.3. but will it be updated to work well with ICS? especially for tablets? this article doesn't get that far.
and will the package also feature the Sony Entertainment Network for media store, etc.? probably.
in other words, does this announcement really mean that Sony and HTC are forming an "alliance of the also-rans" to promote the Sony game/media ecosystem and HTC hardware jointly, so both have a chance in the rapidly expanding "battle of the ecosystems" now underway? to counter MS/Nokia with Windows Phone/XBox, Samsung with all its new stuff, Google with all its cloud stuff, and Apple of course? i guess the only question left is, who will Nokia team up with (if they don't, they'll die)?
Quote:
Originally Posted by nvidia2008
Why can't Sony just make a decent 1080p gaming console with DX11, Unreal Engine 4-quality graphics. Is that too much to ask?
And yeah, Sony, hang on to those exclusives like God Of War, because that's all you've got left for PS3, a, sad, decrepit gaming console.
- design of the PS3 started in early 2001 and hardware specification finalised in 2005; playback of 1080p of content is much less compute intensive for non-interactive media than it is for games, as an example.
- DirectX is a proprietary API developed by Microsoft to run on Windows OS and AMD/Intel hardware, none of which exist and/or run in the PS3.
- there is much more than just the God of War franchise. here's one example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZYkj0glnqs
- according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_3_games there are over 750 games for PS3. with respect to exclusives, a compiled list is available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_3-only_games
Quote:
Originally Posted by nvidia2008
Yup, too little, too late. HTC + Sony + Android + Gaming = Cool, 5 years ago, maybe.
Why can't Sony just make a decent 1080p gaming console with DX11, Unreal Engine 4-quality graphics. Is that too much to ask?
And yeah, Sony, hang on to those exclusives like God Of War, because that's all you've got left for PS3, a, sad, decrepit gaming console.
I've always liked Sony TVs and LCDs, but why are they losing money on it?
Sony Ericsson. 'Nuff said. It was ~the~ cell phone to get. At one time. Now... *sigh*
Also, impossible to find a decent Sony Bluetooth/Wireless headset. Got a pretty decent Dolby 7.1 Turtle Beach headset instead. Killer stuff.
My favourite childhood brand. Now nothing but a joke.
ATRAC3
Minidisc
CD
CDMP3
MP3
Vaio
BluRay
Sony PCs
HDTV
LCD
3DHDTV
Movies
Music
Cell Phones
....
What went wrong? Each of the above had some decent potential to some degree, and made up a promising tech landscape of the 90's and early 00's. Then...
Why DX11, it is MS only technology. And as a user it doesn't matter what the developer/console supports as long as it works.
What is your issue with the PS3? It is still a great machine, and Sony is still adding features, and lots of great games.
Sony Headset, not hard to find, I purchased one a couple of weeks ago, works on my Macs as well.
And your list of products, the vast majority are not Sony technologies, why bunch them all in with Sony? And most of the list you provided have been successful, not just for Sony, but for the other companies that developed them.
if you are going to have an issue with a company please make sure you have your facts right first.