Sony has been paying special attention to the global success of Pokemon Go, and now they want in on that action.
According to an exchange between The Financial Times and Sony Chief Executive Kaz Hirai, Sony is “aggressively getting into” mobile gaming. While it may be “quite a shift from being just a console-based business to being on mobile phones as well,” Pokemon Go has managed to entice them to make the leap.
To do so, Sony has already opened up the ForwardWorks development studio in pursuit of the mobile gaming market. But Hirai doesn’t want to just make the next Angry Birds — Augmented Reality gaming in particular has inspired him:
Pokémon Go is a real game-changer. I’m very interested in the fact that it has the potential to really change the way people move, literally.
Hirai believes that this “innovative idea” is going to “lift all boats for the video game industry.” He specifically wants AR functionality to be a part of their mobile push. The games will leverage Sony’s existing gaming IPs, and will focus for now on Asian markets. So far, the mobile studio has yet to announce anything more specific, but the Tokyo Game Show is right around the corner, so we may be hearing something sooner rather than later.
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