Once in awhile one or more of the big companies in gaming have to voice their opinions on mobile gaming. Is it because it is a threat and they just don’t want to come off worried or perhaps it is just the fact that they look down on the little guys sometimes. Sony’s boss, Jack Tretton, brings us a little gem of wisdom today about mobile games.
With the PS Vita on the way, Sony’s Boss Jack Tretton felt the need to voice his opinion that he isn’t worried about mobile games being any sort of threat to the PS Vita. In fact, he comes mobile games to DIY movies that people make using a camcorder when compared to high budget ‘portable’ games. There is a difference since it isn’t on a mobile device (tablet, phone etc). One problem though, Jack Tretton forgot about the Xperia Play apparently which is, so far, the only Playstation certified mobile device. He apparently also forgot about the two upcoming Sony tablets that will also be Playstation certified.
To date, Sony’s PSOne game offerings on the Xperia Play have been ‘meh’ at best. We have seen one- and two-man game developer teams pumping out better, high quality games then what they are releasing for their ‘Playstation certified’ devices. Mr. Tretton drops a few gems of wisdom to Gamasutra in an interview such as:
“If I open a movie theatre next door [to a theatre] and start charging 50 cents per ticket, but I’m showing you things I filmed with my camcorder, I don’t think it’s a threat to the theatre charging $13 per ticket”.
Wise words considering that half the big budget movies that come out lately are terrible, but back to gaming. Essentially, this could be taken as Mr. Tretton stating that mobile games are low budget and generally unpolished. The funny part is that there is a lot of mobile influence and direction that the PS Vita is taking. Not only that, we could name 50 games right now that are high quality, polished and exceptionally fun to play that are made by small developers for mobile devices. Actually, let’s start that list:
- Dungeon Defenders – Trendy Entertainment (small indie team)
- Pocket Legends – Spacetime Studios
- Star Legends – Spacetime Studios
- Order & Chaos – Gameloft
- Crusade of Destiny – Dvide Arts (1 man team)
- Zenonia series – Gamevil
- Earth and Legends – Dvide Arts (1 man team)
- Word of Midgard (Small indie team)
- Samurai II and Shadowgun – Madfinger Games
- Riptide GP – Vector (2-man team)
- Cordy – SilverTree media
- Minecraft – Mojang
- Pretty much anything Hyperbees publish
- Pew Pew and Pew Pew 2 – Jean-François Geyelin
- Star Traders – Trese Brothers
Actually there are too many small awesome game developers on Android (and mobile in general) to list but the idea is there, indie developers make excellent mobile games. Just because you can toss $20 million into a title with a team of 1000 people working on it doesn’t make it a good game. However, Mr. Tretton believes that when the PS Vita comes out that it will eventually convert mobile games back to their new portable device, making them more sophisticated gamers.
“For every consumer you lose to a tablet or smart phone, there are three consumers that became interested in gaming in a simple form,” Tretton concluded. “And those people might be able to be migrated into a sophisticated gamer. We look at that as being the opposite of a threat, but an opportunity.”
That must be why every major gaming company is looking at mobile gaming and expanding into it if they haven’t already. Even with rumors of Steam getting on board, there is already a multitude of major studios on board. Most of these indie studios also use the same technology like Unity3D, Unreal Engine, Shiva3D and more that major ones use. Don’t bash the indie developers though, they are what makes the gaming world a better place because of their creativity and unique game ideas. Just because they decide to develop for mobile, where gaming is extremely popular and will continued to be, doesn’t make their products less in quality to what may show up on the PS Vita.
Thank god that the Xperia Play is a great device but we will put that credit on Sony Ericsson.
Website Referenced: Gamasutra via PocketGamer
