A new company forming within Sony’s video game unit will focus on mobile games featuring characters from PlayStation titles.
Sony Computer Entertainment (which will soon change its name to Sony Interactive Entertainment) said on Thursday that it is launching ForwardWorks Corporation, a new company “aimed to deploy new services toward the ever-expanding smart device market.” ForwardWorks will officially begin operations on April 1 and the new company will be developing mobile games for smartphones that will draw on its parent company’s intellectual property, including specific characters as well as Sony’s (SNE) decades of video game experience.
Sony launched the PlayStation brand in 1994 and the company has introduced a range of popular video game characters, from Crash Bandicoot to Uncharted‘s Nathan Drake.
Sony said the new company will focus on providing games for users in Japan and the rest of Asia. Atsushi Morita, SCE’s Japan and Asia head, will be president of ForwardWorks, which launches roughly a year after Sony shut down PlayStation Mobile—an earlier attempt by the company to build games for mobile devices that never gained much traction.
Earlier this month, video game competitor Nintendo launched its first mobile app, called Miitomo, in Japan. While Nintendo’s Miitomo is likely to eventually include mobile gaming, the app seems to be more focused on a social networking experience catered to users of the company’s gaming consoles.