Sony Interactive Entertainment is acquiring Savage Game Studios, a mobile game developer, to establish a new PlayStation Studios Mobile Division. This new division will operate separately from the console and PC division, focusing on creating and publishing “innovative, on-the-go experiences based on new and existing PlayStation IP.” The announcement was made via a new PlayStation Blog post by Herman Hulst, Head of PlayStation Studios, as he welcomed the Savage Game Studios group and the creation of a new mobile game division for PlayStation.
Michail Katkoff, CEO and Co-founder of Savage Game Studios, had this to say about the studio’s establishment:
Established in 2020 and led by myself and fellow Co-founders Nadjim Adjir and Michael McManus, Savage Game Studios was born of our many years of mobile game development experience spanning a number of massively successful global IP. Our guiding vision was a creative space where experimentation and taking risks weren’t warily avoided, but rather eagerly embraced. We’ve all worked at big studios and while we respect the advantages of ample resources, we wanted to stay small and nimble so we could call our own shots.
In the same post, Hulst reiterates that PlayStation’s efforts in expanding beyond console do not “diminish our commitment to the PlayStation community, nor our passion to keep making amazing single-player, narrative-driven experiences.” PlayStation has recently ramped up its releases on PC, with Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered recently making waves and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection coming soon to the platform.
In a way, this new division is PlayStation’s entry into the quickly growing mobile space. Microsoft and Xbox, the company’s closest gaming competitor, have taken a cloud-based approach by bringing their vast library of titles to mobile devices via the Xbox Cloud service. It remains to be seen if Microsoft will expand further than this to native mobile titles, as it will have the means to do so soon; the tech giant is in the process of acquiring Activision-Blizzard, and under that banner is mobile games giant King, best known for the Candy Crush series.
