Sony Entertainment has made a name for itself over the years for a lot of things, be it games (remember Twisted Metal, anyone?), gaming consoles, motion pictures, and lately, mobile phones. When the entertainment giant partnered with Ericsson to form Sony Ericsson, they introduced the world to a whole new dimension of feature phones with their Walkman lineup. Then, they were also the first ones to introduce a 12 megapixel shooter in a smartphone (if you can call Symbian that) with their Satio. Lately, since the company has become Sony Mobile, they’ve produced some top of the line devices with their Xperia series, and even took a bold attempt at merging smartphone with PlayStation gaming console with the Xperia Play.
Gaming consoles have been one thing that Sony has excelled at over the years. It’s hard to argue that PlayStation 3 is still one of the toughest gaming beasts out there, and despite Xbox’s popularity, the Japanese console holds its ground. Then, the handheld version in the shape of PlayStation Portable (PSP) has also seen its fair share of evolution, with the likes of PSP Go and Vita adding spice to the mix.
Lately, Sony seems to have realized that mobile gaming has largely shifted to smartphones and tablets, and this is perhaps the area that they need to put more focus on. It’s also majorly true, because if we take the hardcore gamer out of the picture, the casual user prefers simpler, fun-oriented titles like Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds or Temple Run. What better platform to promote this genre through than Android and iOS? And Sony’s PlayStation Store has been actively bridging that gap.
In an attempt to promote PlayStation Mobile platform, Sony has just announce a new promotional offer, whereby they’ll be offering one game from their PlayStation Store for free, seven days a week, for the next six weeks!
The promotion comes as a new year giveaway, and is definitely going to leave a lot of people interested in the titles on offer even after the free period is over (or, at least this is what Sony is hoping for). There are certain caveats to it, however. For one, the free game promo is available only for a select few countries – Japan, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Australia, to be exact – and the games themselves will run only on PlayStation Certified smartphones or tablets, which, while including a good majority of the recent Xperia devices, contains very few smartphones from the likes of only HTC & Sharp. The choice of leaving out US-based customers is rather odd, but perhaps they have something else in store for that demographic.
PlayStation Mobile titles are not really aimed at hardcore gamers, since they’re mostly plain-looking titles, but they’re fun. The first one available for grabs is Samurai Beatdown, with more to follow during the upcoming six weeks.
(Source: SonyMobile)
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