Sony has plans to open a new game development studio focused exclusively on bringing existing PlayStation franchises to mobile gaming.
Based in Tokyo, the new ForwardWorks Corporation will open its doors on 1 April and "is aimed to deploy new services toward the ever-expanding smart device market".
As part of the official announcement, Sony says "ForwardWorks will leverage the intellectual property of the numerous PlayStation dedicated software titles", and develop games for Android and iOS. The games are described as "full fledged", which gives some hope we'll be seeing titles more advanced than a Parappa the Rapper match-three puzzler. Exactly what we can expect from ForwardWorks has yet to be revealed, though.
The new studio will be headed up by Sony Japan's Atsushi Morita, with Andrew House, the current president and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, on the board. Although ForwardWorks releases are so far planned only for release in Japan and Asia, Sony says it will "vigorously maximize the corporate value and create new business opportunities through the establishment of ForwardWorks", making it unlikely that at least some of its future games won't see international release.
ForwardWorks won't be Sony's first attempt at mobile gaming success. In 2012, it launched PlayStation Mobile, a platform that allowed developers to create games that were cross-compatible with Android smartphones and PS Vita, and could be sold through the PlayStation Store. Despite availability on a wide number of handsets, it never quite took off though, and was finally discontinued in September 2015.
This second attempt at mobile glory comes in the wake of Sony closing down Evolution, the UK studio behind racing sim Driveclub. Sony is far from the only predominantly console-based games publisher to embrace mobile either. Even the staunchly traditional Nintendo is entering the field, with its first smartphone app Miitomo launching later this month.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
