SoulCalibur: Lost Swords coming winter 2013 with Sophitia in tow

Namco Bandai's new free-to-play, single-player tale of souls/swords SoulCalibur: Lost Swords is expected to launch on the PlayStation Network sometime this winter, the company announced at a private pre-TGS event earlier this week. The game also marks classic Athenian warrior Sophitia's return to the stage of history, after being killed off between SoulCaliburs 4 and 5.

So far, Mitsurugi and Siegfried are the only other confirmed characters, but we figure that won't be the case for long. Producer Masaaki Hoshino could not speak to how exactly the game will be monetized, though he was able to clarify that Lost Swords runs on "the next iteration" of the SoulCalibur 5 engine. "The game system itself is quite different, it's been more streamlined and simplified so that people can more easily perform flashy, over-the-top maneuvers," Hoshino told us through a translator.