‘Its difficult to run a games business on smartphones’

The current iPhone and Android app models are not good enough for gaming, says SCEE chief Andrew House.

His comments come ahead of the launch of PlayStation Suite, a cross-platform system for PlayStation games that run on both mobiles and NGP.

House says Suite can become a ‘destination for games’ on Android and make it easier for developers to build a business in this space.

It allows for easier navigation of quality game titles and launches with Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play Android smartphone on March 31st.

If you talk to content providers they will uniformly tell you that it is very difficult to run a business within the Android model or the iOS model as it currently sits,” said House.

There are huge amounts of competition and free content out there and it is difficult to differentiate premium gaming experiences from lesser quality ones.

So with PlayStation Suite we are trying to establish a PlayStation Store within the Android marketplace.

This will be a destination for games that have a seal of quality which use the PlayStation tried and tested interface, either physically or via virtual or on-screen representation of that.

Where it is easier to differentiate your content of being of good quality, it becomes easier for consumers to navigate through. And we think consumers are prepared to pay a little bit more of a premium if they can get that sense of quality.”

House adds that he hopes PlayStation Suite will serve an audience that sits between the core and casual gaming market – an audience of around 9m gamers.

If you think about the audience for games as a pyramid, you have at the top the core or committed gamers who want the best of the best, the richest, deepest, most immersive gaming experiences. They will naturally be the NGP early adopters.

Then if you look at the wider bottom of the pyramid, you have got a huge amount of activity in the area of casual mobile games. Much of the content in that area is free.

Our feeling, and our research bears this out, is that there is potential for an audience that sits in-between those two.”