Sony Forms ForwardWorks To Develop 'Full-Fledged' Smartphone Games With PlayStation IP

One thing that can be said about Sony is that it doesn't give up without a fight. We witnessed the rise and fall of the admittedly very cool Xperia Play smartphone, which acted as both a phone and portable gaming device. Then came the company's PlayStation Mobile gaming network, which was shuttered last summer. However, is attempting to get its foot in the door once again with a new company called ForwardWorks Corporation.

ForwardWorks will be 100 percent focused on mobile gaming using PlayStation IP, and while details are rather thin at the moment, we're going to see the company begin its operations on April 1st, at which point we could learn a lot more about which games are en route. Sony is taking a page out of Nintendo's playbook this time, which recently started dipping its toes into mobile.

Sony Xperia Play
Sony's Xperia Play failed to see major success in 2011

If you're already excited about ForwardWorks, we’re unfortunately going to have to deflate your balloon a bit: the company is only going to be catering to users in Japan and Asia. That doesn't mean that ForwardWorks can't branch out in the future to additional markets like the U.S. and Canada, but Sony would have to have some assurance that its efforts wouldn't be executed in vain.

Sony's announcement comes mere days after Nintendo announced that its first-ever mobile app, called Miitomo, reached 1 million downloads in three days. What makes that feat even more impressive is that the app is exclusive to Japan.

We can hope that both Sony and Nintendo will branch out to other parts of the world sooner than later, because there's clearly some great demand for the latest crop of mobile games.