PlayStation Studios has hired Kabam veteran Kris Davis as it readies a major push into mobile.
Davis is now senior director and head of mobile business development at the platform holder, bringing with him many years of experience working across business development, M&A, licensing and strategic partnerships at Kabam. Davis has also previously worked in BD roles at Beeline Interactive and Capcom.
PlayStation raised eyebrows last summer when it appointed former head of App Store business management and Apple Arcade head of content Nicola Sebastiani as vice president and head of mobile at PlayStation Studios.
It has filled three other senior positions in the last year, too. Most notably, this month Olivier Courtemanche was appointed head of mobile product at PlayStation Studios, moving over from a product management role at Meta. Courtemanche previously worked in product management at EA, Disney and Zynga.
In December last year, former Gamevil, Glu and EA producer Elizabeth Dumbrique joined PlayStation’s San Mateo operation as mobile product manager.
Chris Spencer also joined as senior producer, mobile, in May 2021, having spent almost eight years at EA/Chillingo. Spencer is based at PlayStation’s Liverpool, UK studio.
These won’t be the last hires PlayStation makes as it builds its mobile superteam. It is currently hiring a mobile QA project lead at its Liverpool office, and has several open roles for mobile engineers and programmers in San Diego and San Francisco.
PlayStation boss Jim Ryan has previously stated that the console maker plans to launch major first party franchises on mobile. In May last year he said:
“We have been thinking about how players enjoy our content and have had some early success with experimenting with mobile games and apps to provide more choice to gamers. Mobile is just one of the areas we are exploring to reach millions of gamers beyond our platforms.”
“PlayStation has a huge catalogue of diverse first-party IP that can transition to smartphone gaming and complement our AAA games or live service games. We are exploring the mobile market with some wonderful PlayStation franchises so please stay tuned.”
