Chinese e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba has established a new games division to create its own titles in-house. 

As reported by China Daily, the new arm was formed by the Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment Group. 

The division will be headed up by Zhan Zhonghui, who co-founded online entertainment company Ejoy, which was acquired by Alibaba just last week.

This isn't the first time Alibaba has attempted to carve out a spot in the games industry. Earlier this year the firm invested $145 million to establush a global distribution network for mobile games, paricularly in emerging markets.

"The development of the mobile game markets in the Middle East, Latin America and Southeast Asia is uneven," explained company president Simon Shi at the time.

"European, American, Japanese and South Korean markets are already considered mature markets, while the Middle East in the past two years is seeing rapid development.

"Latin America and Southeast Asia as emerging markets also show very high potential in the mobile games consumption, while we're doing very well in other emerging markets like India and Indonesia already."