After two years, Sony is giving up on its cross-platform strategy for all future Android-powered smart phones.
PlayStation Mobile began two years ago as a digital conduit for select PlayStation Network titles and PSone classics to be enabled across certified Android smartphones. Fast forward to this week (Wednesday, August 6), Sony has announced that PlayStation Mobile will come to an end, dropping support for the mobile platform in future Android OS updates.
The company will be moving away from what was supposed to be an inciting carrot-on-a-stick for mobile developers to create games for Android and the PlayStation Vita (especially the PS Vita, given how the the industry was moving away from dedicated handhelds faster than you could say moolah), easing the resources and dev-time needed to support both.
While it did help grease the wheels for better Indie support in the long run, PlayStation Mobile itself never truly caught on. It never attracted the Angry Birds’ of the world, and in most cases, mobile developers chose to just create native games for the PlayStation Vita itself, completely bypassing the need for PlayStation Mobile certification.
As it goes forward, PlayStation Mobile will only be accessible on Android devices running the Google mobile OS version 4.4.2 or lower. Newer devices might be able to run some PS Mobile games, but they are sure to come with potential technical hiccups. And with the upcoming Android L OS launching in late 2014, traces of PS Mobile functionality will be erased completely.
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