Sony Interactive Entertainment president and global CEO Andrew House recently spoke about the company’s focus to remain on games and entertainment for the living room, and potential in smartphone games in a recent interview with Bloomberg.
During the interview at Tokyo Game Show 2017, House had a few things to say about seeing limited global potential for handheld gaming in the age of smartphones, and how Sony has no concrete plans to take on Nintendo’s Switch:
“The Nintendo device is a hybrid device and that’s a different approach and strategy,” said House. “We have not seen that as being a huge market opportunity,” he said in reference to handheld gaming outside of Japan and Asia.
He continued, “The Vita experience was that outside of Japan and Asia, there was not a huge demand. The lifestyle shift toward the dominance of smartphones as the single key device that is always with you, was the determining factor.”
Sony launched its own mobile games studio ForwardWorks last year, and since then the company released Everybody’s Golf as its first title. House said the unit is doing “fantastic.”
Lastly, House said he hasn’t seen any signs of the Nintendo Switch having an impact on content or hardware sales for Sony:
“That draws me to the conclusion that they’ve really been additive to the business in the last year or so. 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.”
