Sony shutting down Playstation Mobile service

Despite sexy hardware and arguably solid software, Sony mobile devices remain niche devices in most markets, due to a variety of factors including limited global advertising. The inability to generate real profits with its Android devices has caused Sony to reveal plans to slow things down a bit on the mobile front, and apparently this also means shutting down mobile-related services that haven’t caught on in a bigger way.

Last year, Sony dropped Android suport for Playstation Mobile, which meant no more new Android compatible titles for the app store. Now it seems that they are taking things a step further, and shutting down the service altogether. For Android users, this means that, come September 10th, you’ll no longer be able to buy or re-download games you already bought. It is also worth noting that Playstation Mobile isn’t just shutting down on the Android side, PS Vita users will also be effected, with no new PS Vita-compatible content after July 15th and the same September date for shutting down re-downloads and new purchases.

Considering the power of the Playstation brand, it’s too bad that Sony never found a way to properly leverage its Playstation name in order to push more phones and tablets. Part of the reason for the failure is that most of the games were either PS1 ports, or smaller indie titles, with Sony never doing much in the way of true AAA quality new games — at least as far as Android devices are concerned. There was also a pretty limited number of games in the store, regardless of who made them.

Honestly, the service has already been all but forgotten by most Android users, so the loss isn’t that big, but we can’t help but feel that Sony missed a big opportunity by never properly finding a way to capitalize on the Playstation brand in the mobile devices world. What are your thoughts? If Sony had done more to push the PS brand on its phones and tablets, would this have helped sales?