Sony has announced plans to open a new company under its umbrella, focused squarely on smart devices.

The new company, called ForwardWorks, will begin operation on April 1, alongside Sony Computer Entertainment's restructuring to Sony Interactive Entertainment. The announcement promises that ForwardWorks will leverage PlayStation intellectual property, characters, and software titles to make "full-fledged game titles" for the smartphone market.

The announcement is strictly for Japan and Asian markets for the time being, though, with no announced plans for these games to come to North America. Sony's transition to SIE denotes a new, more globalized focus though, so it seems likely that successful games will eventually make the trip stateside.

This comes almost exactly a year after Nintendo announced its own plans to enter the smartphone gaming market, through a partnership with DeNA. The company's first games are said to be free-to-play, and its first application, Miitomo, recently launched in Japan.