Wooga launches into the midcore fray with new studio Black Anvil Games

German mobile developer and publisher Wooga is mixing things up with a new midcore studio in its Berlin HQ, dubbed Black Anvil Games. It's currently working on its first title, a hex-based strategy game entitled Warlords, according to a VentureBeat report.

"We have decided to fully focus Wooga completely on casual games. We had a couple of midcore strategy game in development and have decided to start a new studio for these games," Wooga CEO Jens Begemann told VentureBeat.

The mobile game market is "maturing, consolidating, and getting more professional," according to Begemann. "All of those things are interrelated. It’s more important to make multiple bets and have a portfolio. You have to be profitable as a company to finance new games. The quality is going up all the time, and it is very competitive. If you are a healthy company with a great team, you will be one of those remaining after this period of consolidation."

The studio comprises 40 employees and is headed up by ex-DICE man Wilhelm Oesterberg, who's worked for the company for five years now.

This isn't the first attempt at diversification for the company; it opened a Tokyo office in 2014, and earlier this year launched its first game out of that studio, a puzzle title aimed at the Japanese market.