Sony has decided to abandon the Playstation Mobile platform for Android as developers never showed much interest in Playstation Mobile, in favor of the Vita handheld console. However, Sony is ensuring future access to games purchased via Playstation Mobile for those certified devices that stay at or below Android 4.4.2, but any future updates will not be certified for the program, meaning that those that update their devices to newer Android versions aren’t guaranteed access to Playstation Mobile without issues and even later versions will not allow access at all.
The cross-platform mobile gaming program had the early support of Android manufacturers in HTC, but in practice the program was a confused mess, with games being promised but never released, other games being released but never promoted and the hardware certification process being anything but straightforward. The only devices that were approved outside of now discontinued HTC smartphones were Sony Ericsson’s own Xperia smartphones. To add insult to injury, the Xperia Play was discontinued after less than 18 months because of its own issues with subsequent Android updates breaking hardware controller functionality on the device and rendering the controls useless.
With the retirement of Playstation Mobile for Android and the wider Playstation Certified program, it represents the failure of Sony’s attempt at challenging Apple directly at mobile gaming, but as a result of the attempt, it opened up Android to more possibilities besides being just an operating system for smartphones and tablets and Android is now a viable gaming platform as a result of the effort, with multiple dedicated Android gaming consoles from brands large and small at varying prices with their own libraries of compelling games from developers large and small.
