Apple wanted to bring PlayStation games to iPhone

The gaming industry probably would have looked very different if Apple and Sony had brought PlayStation games to iPhone in 2017.

Apple wanted to release PlayStation games on iPhones and other mobile platforms a few years ago. The plan for this ultimately unrealized project emerged after the Epic Games lawsuit, The Verge reports. Meanwhile, Apple has an interesting alternative, although we’ll never know how popular God of War, The Last of Us, or Uncharted had been on iPhones.

Apple and PlayStation wanted to work together

The document talks about PlayStation Now, an existing service from Sony similar to the Xbox Game Pass. Users can stream unlimited games to their PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PC for a fixed monthly fee.

This service should also have come to Apple devices in 2017, years before cloud gaming became mainstream. Thanks in part to Google Stadia, PlayStation Now and Xbox Game Pass, cloud gaming is bigger than ever, but had Apple and Sony put their heads together in 2017, everything would have turned out very differently. Then the mobile gaming market might have been even bigger than it already is.

It is not clear why the deal never went through. Perhaps it had to do with the technical shortcomings of the time. Today, almost everyone has extremely good WiFi and smartphones that can keep up with it. Four years ago everything was a bit more primitive, so maybe cloud gaming just didn’t work well over a wireless connection back then. Plus, Apple has never really been welcoming to third-party game subscriptions…

For now, PlayStation Now is still not available on mobile platforms, unlike Xbox Game Pass. However, Apple users can indirectly stream PlayStation games by using Remote Play. This service allows PlayStation users to stream their console to a smartphone over a local network.