![]() ![]() If an indie developer can be a rock star, Ismail is one of the most famous front men. In late 2011, his role was to convince developers that Sony and PlayStation were good investments worthy of the time and effort it would take to bring their games to these new platforms.Īhmad and the strategic content team had about six months before the technology shipped, and went into "full-on sales mode," he says.Īnd then, on a Friday evening in late 2011, he connected with Rami Ismail of the independent development studio Vlambeer. Shahid Ahmad knew this, and his new job was an acknowledgment of that reality. As a result, Sony - which had once been a disrupting titan - had spent the previous few years catching up with competition that had beaten it to market and at the cash register. Instead, Sony overshot with the PlayStation 3's high initial price and its newfangled and complex Cell processor hardware. Gone were the days of PlayStation 2, where Sony reigned supreme in the console market. And if it worked, there was the possibility of an even bolder plan. It would have to begin as an act of, if not desperation, then one born of a company that had seen better days. It needed something new, and Ahmad was part of the plan to deliver that. Its first handheld, the PSP, was a moderate seller at a time when its direct, dual-screened competition at Nintendo was finding enormous sales success. Sony's second handheld, the PlayStation Vita, was due to launch late that year in Japan and early the following year in the Americas and Europe. The PlayStation 3 was winding down, and its successor was years away from being unveiled. In those days, Sony was in the midst of something approaching turmoil. Ahmad, the director of strategic content at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, was approaching his 12th hour of work, and he'd been on and off the phone all day, doing his part to save PlayStation. It was a Friday night in late 2011, around 7:30 p.m. ![]()
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