PlayStation has seemingly appointed Apple Arcade’s former content boss to lead its mobile push

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has seemingly hired former Apple Arcade content boss Nicola Sebastiani to lead the company’s new mobile push.

Sebastiani joined PlayStation in July following almost eight years at the iPhone maker, according to his LinkedIn profile. VGC has contacted Sony for confirmation of his appointment.

During his time at Apple, Sebastiani served as head of games business management for the App Store before being appointed head of content for the company’s game subscription service Apple Arcade.

A job advert spotted in April revealed that PlayStation was opening a new business unit to adapt its “most popular franchises” for mobile.

It said the company’s head of mobile would work at its San Mateo or Los Angeles offices in California and be responsible for developing a product roadmap for a 3-5-year time frame.

The following month, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said the platform holder was planning to bring some of its “iconic IP” to mobile during its current business year ending in March 2022.

“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,” he said. “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.”

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Sony says it wants to ‘make PlayStation more social’ and confirms mobile push

SIE will transition its franchises to smartphones ‘to compliment AAA’ console games

Last month, it was confirmed that classic PlayStation racing franchise WipEout is returning in the form of a new mobile game.

Set for release on iOS and Android devices in early 2022, WipEout Rush is a card-based racer featuring a single-player campaign and 60 ships from the original games.

It also includes an original soundtrack from veteran Sony sound designer and composer Alastair Lindsay.