{"id":811816,"date":"2024-12-11T22:20:30","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T04:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/11\/playstation-finds-two-new-execs-for-its-mobile-game-division\/"},"modified":"2024-12-11T22:20:30","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T04:20:30","slug":"playstation-finds-two-new-execs-for-its-mobile-game-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/11\/playstation-finds-two-new-execs-for-its-mobile-game-division\/","title":{"rendered":"PlayStation finds two new execs for its mobile game division"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-module=\"content\" data-testid=\"article-base-body-content\">\n<p data-testid=\"content-paragraph\"><span data-testid=\"content-text\">PlayStation has uploaded a new pair of executives to lead its mobile division. As of today, Olivier Courtemanche\u00a0and Justin Kubiak hold respective positions as the head of mobile and leader of mobile business development and partnerships at Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE).<\/span><\/p>\n<p data-testid=\"content-paragraph\"><span data-testid=\"content-text\">Both men have been at SIE since 2022: Courtemanche, an alum of EA and Meta, started out as a senior director for PlayStation Studios&#8217; mobile division and last year became co-head alongside Kris Davis. Kubiak joined SIE in licensing mobile partnerships and previously worked at Samsung and NCSoft.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 data-testid=\"content-text\" id=\"Major moves for Sony's mobile business\">Major moves for Sony&#8217;s mobile business<\/h2>\n<p data-testid=\"content-paragraph\"><span data-testid=\"content-text\">The duo mark the first major hires for PlayStation&#8217;s mobile division since the departure of VP <\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gamedeveloper.com\/game-platforms\/playstation-mobile-vp-nicola-sebastiani-has-left-sony-interactive-entertainment\">Nicola Sebastiani<\/a><\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"> in 2023. At the time, PlayStation&#8217;s ambitions for the phone market were quiet, save for acquiring <\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gamedeveloper.com\/business\/playstation-acquires-mobile-game-developer-savage-game-studios\">Savage Game Studios<\/a><\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\">, which saw the exits of <\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gamedeveloper.com\/business\/savage-game-studios-ceo-michail-katkoff-leaves-playstation-mobile-dev\">CEO Mikhail Katkoff<\/a><\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"> and general manager <\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gamesindustry.biz\/sony-owned-savage-game-studios-rebrands-to-neon-koi\">Sophie Vo<\/a><\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"> not long after Sebastiani left.<\/span><\/p>\n<p data-testid=\"content-paragraph\"><span data-testid=\"content-text\">Savage Game subsequently rebranded to <\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gamedeveloper.com\/business\/savage-game-studios-rebrands-as-neon-koi-has-new-action-game-focus\">Neon Koi<\/a><\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"> only to be <\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gamedeveloper.com\/business\/sony-shuts-down-concord-dev-firewalk-and-mobile-studio-neon-koi\">closed down<\/a><\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"> alongside <\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"><span>Concord <\/span><\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\">developer Firewalk back in October. Prior to its end, Neon Koi was working on a mystery action-RPG for smartphones.<\/span><\/p>\n<p data-testid=\"content-paragraph\"><span data-testid=\"content-text\">In May, reports claimed Sony was developing a <\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gamedeveloper.com\/business\/report-sony-making-playstation-mobile-store-for-f2p-games\">mobile PlayStation store<\/a><\/span><span data-testid=\"content-text\"> for free-to-play titles. Those rumblings indicated the Japanese company was building a new platform to help it &#8220;develop, publish, and operate free-to-play mobile games.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<h2>About the Author<\/h2>\n<div data-component=\"contributor-summary\">\n<p><a data-testid=\"contributor-summary-img-link\" data-discover=\"true\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gamedeveloper.com\/author\/justin-carter\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-component=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/eu-images.contentstack.com\/v3\/assets\/blt740a130ae3c5d529\/blt33d97cf9dc327673\/650f03deb8329c920e5af96f\/Image_from_iOS.jpg?width=400&#038;auto=webp&#038;quality=80&#038;disable=upscale\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Justin Carter\" title=\"Justin Carter\"><\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<p data-testid=\"contributor-summary-subtitle\">Contributing Editor, GameDeveloper.com<\/p>\n<div>\n<p data-testid=\"content-paragraph\"><span data-testid=\"content-text\">A Kansas City, MO native, Justin Carter has written for numerous sites including IGN, Polygon, and SyFy Wire. In addition to Game Developer, his writing can be found at io9 over on Gizmodo. Don&#8217;t ask him about how much gum he&#8217;s had, because the answer will be more than he&#8217;s willing to admit.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamedeveloper.com\/business\/playstation-finds-two-new-execs-for-its-mobile-game-division\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PlayStation has uploaded a new pair of executives to lead its mobile division. As of today, Olivier Courtemanche\u00a0and Justin Kubiak hold respective positions as the head of mobile and leader of mobile business development and partnerships at Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE). Both men have been at SIE since 2022: Courtemanche, an alum of EA and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":811817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2915,3014],"tags":[10753,5216],"class_list":{"0":"post-811816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-finds","8":"category-playstation","9":"tag-finds","10":"tag-playstation"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}