As teased last week, three former Relic Entertainment employees have announced the formation of their own development studio, Smoking Gun Interactive. Acting as Smoking Gun's CEO and creative director is Company of Heroes producer and Relic's previous director of development, John Johnson. Homeworld programmer and Company of Heroes lead programmer Drew Dunlop fulfills the duties of CTO and technical director, with Company of Heroes art director Angie Radwan-Pytlewski taking on the responsibilities of CCO and art director.

Joining the founding trio at Smoking Gun Interactive are a number of previous Company of Heroes staff, including story and script writer Duane Pye and audio director Crispin Hands. As Smoking Gun boasted in its teaser campaign last week, aggregate site Game Rankings lists Relic Entertainment's Company of Heroes as the highest rated real-time strategy game on the PC.

According to today's announcement, Smoking Gun Interactive plans to focus on "innovative award winning cross platform games based on original or company owned intellectual property." Based off the developer's heritage, it is assumed these games will be of the real-time strategy variety.

"The team at Smoking Gun has worked passionately together for over 7 years, building teams that have created the most critically acclaimed games in their genre," noted Johnson. "As the industry evolves so do the ways that people interact with video games. With our collective input Smoking Gun will be at the forefront of producing innovative best-selling titles, that really push the envelop further than we've gone before."