TOKYO —Sony’s gaming chief, Kazuo Hirai, expected by some analysts to be Sony’s next president, gave hints on Wednesday to questions that have fascinated the blogosphere for months: Is there a new Sony hand-held gaming device in the works to succeed its PlayStation Portable? If so, what will it look like? Will there be a PlayStation Phone? And what will Sony do to make a splash in a portable gaming market that has been usurped by casual games played on the iPhone and Android devices?
Although Mr. Hirai was coy about the specifics, he said Sony had been thinking of a successor game “since the day” the PlayStation was released.
A new game, he suggested, may have both touch-screen controls and the more conventional buttons and analog sticks that control the current version.
And although he acknowledged the popularity of casual games on smartphones, he said Sony would continue to appeal to a different genre of fans, those who appreciate the generally deeper, more sophisticated game play of conventional console titles.
“The games being played on Android and Apple platforms are fundamentally different from the world of immersive games that Sony Computer Entertainment, and PlayStation, aims for,” Mr. Hirai said. The kinds of gamers who enjoy more intense games, he said, would remain Sony’s fan base.
When Sony released its PlayStation Portable six years ago, it was the first serious challenge to Nintendo’s dominance in hand-held gaming machines. But Nintendo held its own with its DS device, rushed to market a month before the PlayStation. The DS has since outsold the Sony device two to one, or 135 million units compared with 62 million units through September.
Now, the two companies are gearing up for Round 2. Nintendo said this year that it would release its 3DS hand-held console early next year; it lets players see images in 3D without wearing special glasses.
But both Nintendo and Sony are up against a perhaps even bigger rival: low-cost, casual games downloaded onto iPhones, iPod Touches and Android devices, which have grown explosively. One popular game, Angry Birds, has been downloaded 50 million times, its publisher Rovio said this month. In comparison, Sony’s latest big title on the PSP, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, has sold three million copies since its release earlier this month.
So how will Sony wow gamers on the go?
New controls, for one thing, Mr. Hirai suggested, in a nod by Sony to the success of touch-pad-controlled games played on Nintendo’s DS handheld and the iPhone.
“Depending on the game, there are ones where you can play perfectly well with a touch panel,” Mr. Hirai said. “But you can definitely play immersive games better with physical buttons and pads. I think there could be games where you’re able to use both in combination.”
Mr. Hirai said the fast rise of casual games could in fact be good for Sony’s gaming business.
“We’re seeing people who never had an interest in games join the gaming population,” he said. “That means that the gaming industry pie is getting bigger.”
Mr. Hirai was cautious about the idea of a PlayStation-cum-phone, however, saying he did not want to confuse game fans over which device to buy.
The Wall Street Journal and others have reported that Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Sony and Ericsson, are developing a smartphone capable of playing simple, downloaded video game titles, including ones from Sony’s first PlayStation. Speculation over the release of a PlayStation Phone heated up in October when the technology site, Engadget, released video clips of a prototype phone.
“We don’t want gamers to be asking, what’s the difference between that and a PSP,” Mr. Hirai said. “We have to come up with a message that users will understand. It would have to be a product that keeps the PlayStation’s strengths intact.”
Mr. Hirai also spoke about Sony’s new music streaming service, Music Unlimited, a digital music service based on cloud technology that lets users access millions of songs saved on the Web instead of downloading tracks onto their computers like the Apple iTunes service. The service is available only through Internet-connected Sony products.
A subscription gives a user access to a catalog of about six million songs, which can be streamed on Sony’s Internet-connected devices, like the PlayStation 3, personal computers and Bravia TVs, Mr. Hirai said. Sony introduced Music Unlimited in Britain and Ireland on Wednesday and will bring the service to a few other European countries, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States next year.
Music Unlimited, part of Sony’s Qriosity platform, which will eventually stream music, games, e-books and video-on-demand, is part of an effort by the company to better marry its consumer electronics business with content. But crucially, Music Unlimited is not yet available on Sony’s portable devices such as its Walkman digital music player or cellphones. Mr. Hirai said Sony planned to integrate its mobile devices eventually.