For the past two years, Sony has been building up their mobile gaming division at PlayStation. Nicola Sebastiani, a former Apple Arcade executive, was sought out by Sony to become the new mobile gaming division’s head, so they could propel it in the right direction. However, Sebastiani has left the company in search of new opportunities.

Nicola Sebastiani was the head of content for Apple Arcade for eight years before being offered the deal by Sony. Furthermore, Sebastiani’s background in leading Apple’s business management team gave Sony the impression that the veteran was the person individual to take the challenge of spearheading their mobile gaming division. Also, Sebastiani worked at Ubisoft in product management and currently remains as a board member at the independent publisher Raw Fury.

As the Vice President and head of PlayStation Studios, he made a lot of big steps for Sony. Nicola Sebastiani had a major hand in acquiring Savage Game Studios, the current developers behind Sony’s first Triple-A live-service action game. In addition, he was greatly responsible for acquiring and melding the current PlayStation mobile team that began working in July of 2021. Nicola Sebastiani also helped to build a growth strategy for the mobile gaming division. However, the fledgling gaming studio will have to find a replacement to fill Sebastiani’s role if Sony wishes to get their mobile gaming division off the ground.

It is not certain why the former executive left Sony or whether he has joined another one. Sebastiani did not publicly announce his leave from Sony, but information on his LinkedIn page provided the needed information to confirm the information. Moreover, Nicola Sebastiani has noted that he will “pursue a new, undisclosed opportunity.”

Over the course of two years, Sony Interactive Entertainment built a team of experienced professionals from Apple, Kabam, Meta, Tencent, Super Evil Megacorp, Samsung, Niantic, Zynga, Riot, and others. Sony first announced their plans to bring more of its most popular core intellect properties to mobile in May of 2021; they want to extend their reach beyond the main console audience. Now, the company is heavily investing in live service games with plans to grow these shares up to sixty percent in the next four years. During a 2022 business briefing, the Sony Interactive Entertain president Jim Ryan stated the company expects half of their annual releases to be either computer or mobile releases by 2025.

“As we assured you before with our plans to bring select titles to PC, our efforts beyond console in no way diminish our commitment to the PlayStation community, nor our passion to keep making amazing single-player, narrative-driven experiences,” President of PlayStation Studios Herman Hulst said. “Our mobile gaming efforts will be similarly additive, providing more ways for more people to engage with our content, and striving to reach new audiences unfamiliar with PlayStation and our games.”

However, the division will not be fumbling on their feet for long. In fact, it would seem that Kris Davies and Olivier Courtemanche have stepped up to be co-heads of mobile at PlayStation Studios according to this source.