Sony plans to launch at least five PlayStation games for mobile devices

By Gabe Gurwin Published October 14, 2016

With the PlayStation Vita not exactly turning into the runaway success Sony had hoped for, the company is looking to other devices to put its games into players’ pockets. By March of 2018, PlayStation will release at least five games on iOS and Android.

Sony’s ‘ForwardWorks’ will be responsible for the smartphone games. The company began this practice back in March following a restructuring that turned Sony Computer Entertainment into Sony Interactive Entertainment. The plan to move PlayStation games to smartphones — “full-fledged gaming titles,” no less — was actually first revealed at that time.

Recommended Videos

“ForwardWorks will leverage the intellectual property of the numerous PlayStation dedicated software titles and its gaming characters, as well as the knowledge and know-how of gaming development expertise which was acquired over the years with PlayStation business to provide gaming application optimized for smart devices including smartphones to users in Japan and Asia,” Sony said when ForwardWorks was first unveiled.

As the first announcement suggested, the smartphone games will first be released in Japan and will then roll out to other Asian countries. A PlayStation representative told the Wall Street Journal that there are no plans to bring the games to Europe or the United States at this time.

The move to dedicated smartphone games comes after years of Sony’s “PlayStation minis” program, which brought bite-sized games to the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. Games that would feel right at home on a smartphone, particularly Uncharted: Fight for Fortune, were also released digitally to the Vita. We’re excited for just about anything Sony wants to bring to mobile, unless it happens to be Invizimals.

Though the PlayStation 4 continues to succeed and its PlayStation VR peripheral is sold out just about everywhere, Sony’s lead over the competition has been narrowed in recent months. After a very strong showing in North America over its first few years, the PlayStation 4 has sold fewer units than the Xbox One for three months in a row.

Former Contributor

Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…

Topics

Gaming

Modern Warfare 4 brings Call of Duty back to its glory days. I hope the streak lives.

Infinity Ward’s latest campaign goes back to Call of Duty’s roots and recaptures what made me a fan more than a decade ago.

Call of Duty MW4 menu screen

The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.

After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.

Gaming

Epic is throwing $50,000 for vibe-code games. What could possibly go wrong?

Epic is rewarding vibe-coded games with real money

Epic MegaJam 2026

Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.

Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”

Gaming

Monster Hunter Outlanders arrives on Android and iOS next week with four-player co-op

The free-to-play spin-off launches October 29 with open-world exploration, mobile-focused combat, and a building system.

Monster Hunter Outlanders poster

It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.

Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.