Sony kicks off new PlayStation smartphone push

PlayStation Mobile may be dead, but Sony has used its demise as a platform to kick off a brand new push to release content onto smartphones.

The news follows hot on the heels of the release of Nintendo’s first smartphone title, Miitomo, last week.

Sony has formed a new company called ForwardWorks that will produce full-fledged game titles” based on its IP. It will be focused on the Japanese and Asian content to begin with, and the head of SCE in Japan and Asia Atsushi Morita has been placed in charge of the unit. Andrew House has been named as a board member.

ForwardWorks will come into being from April 1st, the same day that Sony Interactive Entertainment becomes an official entity.

The proposals are somewhat different from PlayStation Mobile, which spanned both smartphones and Sony’s portable console business and put a lot of emphasis on porting older games. That initiative also saw Sony Ericsson and Xperia phones branded up as PlayStation devices.

A growing emphasis on mobile is little surprise. PS4 has sold a whopping 36m units globally, but only 2m of those have been in Japan, where the console market is dying – and mobile continues to boom.