As fans worldwide look forward to a simpler, regionally appropriate method of sharing the peculiar joys of "Miitomo," Sony Computer Entertainment - the company behind the PlayStation brand name - is announcing a smartphone drive of its own.
In contrast to Nintendo's atypical approach, and on the same day that SCE renames itself Sony Interactive Entertainment, April 1 2016, ForwardWorks will start out on its mission to deliver "full-fledged game titles" on Android and iOS.
It's to harness PlayStation's "numerous dedicated software titles and its gaming characters," emphasising Sony's background in traditional gaming pursuits.
It's a background that also included an earlier, now shuttered venture into mass-market portable devices by way of PlayStation Mobile, a cross-platform publishing program which ran from 2012 to 2015. But that was mainly for smaller, independent developers rather than a concerted push onto mobile by a dedicated internal studio.
Perhaps recognizing differences in global gaming tastes, as well as the particular niches that mobile games can fill, ForwardWorks is being set up with a focus on users in Japan and Asia, at least at first, and while emphasizing Sony's history in console gaming, these "full-fledged" games will be developed with "casual" enjoyment in mind.
