PlayStation Mobile will be looking at buying up studios once it appoints its new director of business development, one of several senior roles Sony is hiring for right now.
That new director of business development will oversee mobile partnerships, and will be asked to “assess potential merger and acquisition deals as well as opportunities for investment, co-development and licensing partnerships,” according to the job description.
They will also “partner closely with PlayStation’s M&A and corporate development teams to evaluate companies for partnership and investment”. And: “research, source and analyse new acquisitions and partnership opportunities that align with PlayStation mobile strategy”.
That’s just one of several senior roles that have gone live at PlayStation Mobile recently. It is also hiring a director of studio operations, director of mobile product management, senior manager for mobile game licensing, a strategic finance director and a brand manager. There are multiple open roles in programming, engineering and QA as well.
The fresh flurry of job ads ask for candidates with experience working on well-known IP, free to play games, live ops plus knowledge of mobile and console games.
PlayStation Mobile started hiring in earnest a little over a year ago with the appointment of Nicola Sebastiani as vice president and head of mobile at PlayStation Studios. Sebastiani joined from Apple, where he served as the head of App Store business management before moving over to become Apple Arcade head of content.
In the last few months he’s been joined by Kabam veteran Kris Davis, who is now senior director and head of mobile business development at PlayStation. Olivier Courtemanche, the new head of mobile product at PlayStation Studios, joined around the same time as Davis, and moved over from a product management role at Meta. He has also previously worked at EA, Disney and Zynga.
Most recently, PlayStation Mobile hired Tencent’s former senior strategic partnerships and bizdev manager Aaron Yang. Yang is now senior business development manager, licensing and platforms.
Former Gamevil, Glu and EA producer Elizabeth Dumbrique and EA/Chillingo veteran Chris Spencer are also part of the production team at PlayStation Mobile, and are based in the US and UK respectively.
Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan spoke about PlayStation’s mobile plans during a business briefing back in May. In comments transcribed by our friends at VGC he said:
“PlayStation has a huge catalogue of diverse first-party IP that can transition to smartphone gaming and complement our triple-A games or live service games. We are exploring the mobile market with some wonderful PlayStation franchises so please stay tuned.”
