Last year at E3, Sony announced the PlayStation Suite. It was meant to be a handful of tools that would allow developers to create games that could be played across the PSP, PS Vita, PS3 and Android smartphones. The news led to a push to have smartphones labeled as PlayStation certified with Sony Ericsson phones obviously leading the charge.
Well, Sony announced last night during their press conference that PlayStation Suite is no more. It’s been renamed PlayStation Mobile to refocus its efforts of moving the PlayStation brand beyond its own borders into the world of smartphones. To help them, Sony announced that HTC would be the first third-party partner to have their phones become PlayStation certified.
“HTC is focused on delivering innovative mobile experiences for people everywhere and SCE’s immersive world of gaming will bring compelling entertainment to HTC One customers across the globe,” said Kouji Kodera, Chief Product Officer, HTC Corporation.
It remains to be seen if the newly christened PlayStation Mobile will remove the ability for developers to also make games for the PSP and PS Vita. We’ve reached out to Sony for clarification and will update if we hear back. If it turns out that it’s now exclusive to smartphone development, it would be a slap in the face to developers hoping to use the cheap SDK to develop titles for the PSN.
Of course, the big question now is which HTC phones will be getting PlayStation certification. According to Sony, the only HTC phones getting certification at this point in time are the HTC One series of phones which includes the HTC One X, HTC One S and the HTC One V. Support will be coming later this year.
PlayStation certification will also be coming to the wide breadth of Sony Xperia smartphones and Sony tablets. Even though those who bought the Xperia Play hoping for an ICS upgrade got their hopes dashed, they can at least look forward to the device getting PlayStation certification and PlayStation Mobile created games.
Sony will probably be showing off PlayStation Mobile at their booth at E3 this year. We’ve not yet seen what the interface or games made with the tools will look like, but Sony is obviously proud of the service. It will be interesting to see what Sony does in the mobile space. Maybe they can accomplish with PlayStation on Android what Microsoft has done with Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7.