Sony Interactive Entertainment’s mobile game development arm ForwardWorks has revealed the line up of smartphone games it is currently working on. Up to six titles are set to be released next year as the company unleashes its back catalogue of gaming franchise on the mobile games market.
ForwardWorks is a mobile games focused label recently formed by Sony to tap into the growing games market on smartphones and tablets. The Japanese company will be hoping that its games can achieve the success of console rival Nintendo Co’s Pokemon GO. Nintendo is due to release its next mobile game , Mario Go in the coming weeks.
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Wild Arms, Arc the Lad, Parappa the Rappa and More
Wild Arms, Arc the Lad, Parappa the Rappa, and Everybody’s golf are the first titles to come out of the mobile games studio. The games revealed by ForwardWorks were announced at a recently ended Presentation in Tokyo and include popular franchises from the gaming giant. In total, 10 games were revealed by the developer.
The line-up is clearly targeted towards the Japanese market, where the games will be released first. Eventually Sony does hope to bring its mobile catalogue to western shores as well however. First up will be Everybody’s Golf which is slated for release in the spring of 2017. Other titles will follow soon after.
The focus on mobile comes as Sony’s stock rises on the back of the success of its games division. The company’s flagship PlayStation 4 console has been widely successful and the casual games market could be its next cash cow.
As mentioned above, Sony has an extensive back-catalogue of titles, characters and franchises it can draw on as it creates content for mobile. Whether the venture will be successful remains uncertain but the move makes sense given the size of mobile gaming market.
