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PlayStation Boss Says Sony Portable Gaming Could Return
John Kodera, the new chief of Sony Interactive Entertainment, has been speaking his mind about the future of the PlayStation brand and has mentioned what he thinks of Sony and portable gaming.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Kodera broke with his predecessor Andrew House on the subject of portable gaming like the PlayStation Portable and the Vita, which House has said he believed to be limited globally. Kodera disagreed and wasn't sure that abandoning the idea is a final decision for Sony.
“In my opinion, rather than separating portable gaming from consoles, it’s necessary to continue thinking of [portable gaming] as one method to deliver more gaming experiences and exploring what our customers want from portable,” Kodera said at a roundtable interview on Wednesday in Tokyo according to Bloomberg. “We want to think about many options.”
Rumors have been circulating about a Sony-made hybrid of a console and a handheld a la Nintendo's Switch, though they appear to be mostly more in wishes than evidence that Sony is planning such a thing. Kodera himself avoided relating his comments to the Switch, but when considering how Sony has felt about the success of the Vita, it is likely that a dockable handheld is not far from his mind.
Sony established an internal initiative for mobile games two years ago called ForwardWorks, though it has yet to deliver the company any major hits.
[Source: Bloomberg]
Our Take
House was pretty firm in his belief that the Vita and the decline of the 3DS compared to the DS meant that portable gaming was dead outside of Japan, but Kodera is seemingly a lot more open to it. I think another device like the Vita is probably not going to do well, but I would be interested to see how they're observing global trends and what they would build in line with that.
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