What happened to PlayStation Mobile?

Gamasutra: "When PlayStation Mobile launched late last year, I truly had high hopes for the platform. Six months on, and it seems like my optimism may have been misguided."

[Granpire]

It's an good read. I certainly wish PSM was better-managed, because it does have a lot of potential.

I don't think any games have quite reached Super Crate Box's purity of gameplay as of yet.

[PirateThom]

Life of Pixel is really good.

[Y_5150]

Chimpact also looks like it's a beautiful game that i didn't expect to be on the service.

But so far all was great on PSM was the free games they offered every week.

[r21]

They gotta make PS mobile more available in other countries like Singapore. They also just add PS Mobile into the main PS Store on the vita.

[delboy]

PS mobile should be available on all mobile devices, not only limited to Sony.
No one buys Sony phones, overpriced garbage.

[profgerbik]

PSM is fine, it will get bigger. Once more people buy Vita's there will be more things being developed for PSM and more of a reason to offer it to more countries. The Vita is actually picking up speed and getting a lot of great support from a range of developers.

I seriously can't expect Sony to focus so much on PSM. Regardless if people don't like the games available now there are quite a few PSM games actually.

Some are pretty good. When they had that promotion, the free PSM games they put up weren't bad. iOS and Android apps for christ sakes weren't booming in 6 months of them being released, so why even bring that up?

For something like this it will take time, especially knowing how big of a market there already is out there. Like I said more Vita's will need to sell to bring attention to more developers that PSM is a market worth looking into, having that will only lead to PSM spreading and becoming more noticeable.

Look at Microsoft and their Windows RT phones or Windows 8 for that matter.. Do they have tons of apps and are beating Android or iOS at the moment? Hell no they aren't and Microsoft is freaking super rich, they can practically do anything and even their app market still is not as big being out longer than PSM.

I mean Microsoft doesn't have that much on their plate app and gaming wise. Sony does, they have all that crap in the PS store to worry about not just PSM and that isn't just including the Vita.. and to top it off they practically manage PSN without making much money or requiring any subscription to use it..

I like Sony but they aren't super man and I personally think they are doing a great job.

If Microsoft can't even do more than them app wise by much that should tell you something. I may not particularly like Microsoft too much but it is nothing new they have more money than Sony no doubt. The fact they do less, with paid subscriptions and all this support and the literal ability to pay anyone off shows Sony is doing something right with way less resources than Microsoft..

Even Nintendo doesn't offer as much as Sony has, no one has offered as much to their customers as a form of appreciation than Sony. That is a real fact and yes they aren't perfect either don't get it twisted but out of all the three they do really show their costumers they are worth something to them.

That speaks volumes to me with any company. Their willingness to show how much they appreciate us, just goes to show how willing they are to continually improve their service for us customers. You seriously don't see many places giving back so much to their user base. That is the way it should be.

Bottom line I know in time it will get better.

[Captain Tuttle]

Stop making excuses. If Sony believed in the platform they would give it proper support. That or the company is just terribly managed.

[DA_SHREDDER]

I just dont get why there isn't a universal network for every Sony product?

[Captain Tuttle]

They have so much quality content between games, movies and music. Tie that in with all of the hardware they make and it's baffling that they haven't taken advantage of that yet.

[TongkatAli]

No trophy support kills it.

[profgerbik]

To me that is like saying I won't buy a single game that has no trophies, kills it. People also have to realize adding trophies costs money and also relies on the developer to implement these into the game. Sony isn't going to do everything for everyone.

Frobisher Says is a perfect example it takes developers to make a little initiative and Sony will gladly support them. They talked to Sony, wanted to implement trophies into their game/app and they allowed them to do just that. PSM developers can do the same but probably don't have the resources or are willing to spend more development time on trophies.

There was also a time where trophies didn't exist and oddly I remember people enjoyed video games just the same. I completely understand trophies can add replay value or a reason to keep playing a game to attain a goal but they aren't ever needed.

[TongkatAli]

True, but Sony made me a trophy whore this generation. I bought Gun Commando and Samurai Beatdown.

[akhmenhawk17]

I am thinking of developing for Playstation Mobile, and our first game is to release soon on Google Play.
Is it worth publishing for Ps mobile?
The name of the the company is Colourblind studios, on facebook if you want to see it.

[rainslacker]

If your using a Mono based development kit then it probably wouldn't take much to port it over. I haven't looked to see if they have requirements for cross playability, but if your publishing it on Google Play you probably already have screen resolution and hardware minimums considered in your code.

It couldn't hurt to port it over. There isn't a lot of competition on the PSM market right now. It'll likely only get bigger too. Only problem I really see right now is there isn't a huge push on the PSM front on Sony's part. It's there to some degree(E3 last year), but overall I think it isn't as known as say iTunes or GP.

I don't know of any market research yet which puts PSM as a great/bad place to publish at the moment. I was working with their beta program, but got sidetracked because I had to pay bills instead, and PSM wasn't live at the time.:)

[sdozzo]

Need like fifty more Indie titles. Honestly, there is maybe five games with buying.

[psp2roundup]

If you know about it, its doing fine with a decent line-up of games coming out week after week, not all are stellar hits sure, but there's some top gaming to be had.

If you don't know about it, then Sony are hardly advertising it outside the PSN blog which is a big shame.

[Good_Guy_Jamal]

Bombed. Despite what the hype and fans were telling you. Under-supported by Sony.

[Captain Tuttle]

Maybe a bit too early to declare "bomb" but it's not off to a good start. The point of the article is that Sony themselves aren't supporting it behind the scenes or with PR and those two things are worrisome.

[typikal82]

They changed it radically. It was originally all psone games, now it's all touch screen games that have been out on other OS's. They even removed all of the old PS games.

It should have been ready to go when the Xperia Play launched but it wasn't and no where are we? Here with this weak store and confusion.

[drsnoopyseussdog]

You should all check out Switch Galaxy for $2.49. It has great gameplay, catchy music, and a decently lengthy story.

[ginsunuva]

They should not make PS mobile available only thru sony site. Play store needs it. Unless google is blocking it.