Sony had announced some time back that it will release Sony Playstation mobile store which will enable people to play PSP games on ‘certified’ mobile phones.
Earlier, it was believed that this would mean Sony phones only but this was not the case. This certification is beyond Sony phones (HTC One series is PSP certified) thus enabling many android users to play PSP games on their phones.
There are already 20 titles in the list and this obviously will increase. Unfortunately, till now it is not available in India but no doubt will hit our shores in some time or the other.
Earlier, I had written a post about the future of handheld gaming devices. This is one more nail in the coffin I believe.
Right now the games are old PSP games, but for how long? If Sony Playstation Mobile store succeeds (which I believe it will) then latest games will come here as it will attract more developers.
Right now there are about 6-7 devices in the market that are PSP certified. This number will increase with the launch of new Sony phones. Also, success of HTC One series will give many users a device to run Sony Playstation.
I believe in an year or so we would have a plethora of phones with this certification and as the power in a phone is increasing (we are already on quad-core) the need of a dedicated hand-held device will reduce even further, especially with the prohibitive cost of the new devices like PSP Vita and Nintendo 3DS.
Beside Sony, Nintendo is the other company that has a hand held device in the market. I am really curious to see whether they will bring their own mobile in the market or launch a ‘Nintendo Wii store’ for Android.
I personally would love to have Mario on my android and with the quality of games that Nintendo continuously churn out and their casual nature, I think they are even better poised to succeed than PSP games.
Only time will whether Nintendo actually does that but if they give even a slight look at the number of downloads of Nintendo emulators I think they should get the hint.
One more advantage of consolidation around Android (or Smartphones in general) is that they all come in the tablet flavour as well. Thus a person can play the same game on their phone and tablet (Screen size of their choice).
This buy-once-play-anywhere policy makes it a very lucrative option for buyers. Success of the App stores (be it Google Play or iOS app store or amazon store) is the biggest proof of that.
It is time for another gadget to give way to the mighty Smartphone.
Accept defeat and bow out!
