No more PlayStation Mobile

Due to Sony being both broke and crap, PSM is going the way of the dodo. You know, PSM the service that turned a small but helpful bunch of coders onto the Vita and gave newcomers somewhere to start? Never mind, Sony clearly doesn't need them (or can afford to support them) any more.

Its rather churlish to suddenly call Sony anti-indie after all the love lavished on the likes of Roll7, Devolver, FuturLab and many others. However, the company should be offering outreach and support, rather than this cack-handed end of service guff. I'm sure Shahid, Gio Corsi and the crew will do what they can for promising talent, but every cut reminds us how cash-poor Sony is, even as it invests in no-hoper services like Vue.

Here's the official word, with key dates below.

• May 31, 2015: Final day to submit new PSM applications
• July 15, 2015: Final day to submit updates to previously released PSM applications; Final day for consumers to purchase PSM applications
• September 10, 2015: Final day of in-app-purchases through PSM applications; final day to re-download previously purchased PSM applications
• November 30, 2015: Final day to access the PSM DevPortal

I'll remember PSM for delights like Life of Pixel, Front Wars, the recent Flem (which proved that some good stuff was still coming), even Square's Chaos Rings landed as a PSM title! If only Sony had made the store easier to use, and promoted it in any shape or form, it would perhaps be better recognised. 

This news follows on from the imminent firmware update that will cripple location support, rendering the Vita less of a connected machine. While the Vita itself is probably doing well enough in Japan to avoid the scrap heap, that clock is probably ticking.

I'm assuming Sony's grand plan was for lots of Android games to come flooding over on PSM, something that never really happened. Hopefully it will open up core PSN development to more coders, perhaps with its own little experimental section, that'd be cool right?