Sony founds company that will make PlayStation games for smartphones

Sony announces that it is setting up a company called ForwardWorks, which will focus on developing games for ‘smart devices’ such as smartphones. According to Sony, these are full-fledged games, based on existing PlayStation titles.

Sony says the new company will create game apps for smartphone users in Japan and Asia, both for Android and iOS. Whether the PlayStation games will also come to mobile devices in other parts of the world is not yet known.

For the development of the mobile games, the company will use the intellectual property of PlayStation titles, and game characters from existing games will also return in the apps. Sony states that the goal is to make full-fledged games. ForwardWorks will also be working on a network or service for mobile devices. Sony is probably referring to further development or expansion of the PlayStation Network for the mobile market.

ForwardWorks has a branch in Tokyo starting April 1, when the new financial year of Sony and many other Japanese companies begins. It is not yet known when the first mobile PlayStation games will be released.

It is not the first time that Sony has entered the market for smartphone games. For example, the PlayStation Mobile platform already existed and there was an Android app that worked on a select number of phones, with which indie games in particular could be played. However, that service was closed in 2015 and the app also disappeared.

Years earlier, in 2011, Sony released a PlayStation smartphone: the Xperia Play. A successor to that device has never appeared. With these previous initiatives, Sony mainly tried to bring existing games to smartphones. With the creation of the new company, that strategy seems to be changing and the focus is on developing standalone games for the mobile market.