Big news from Asia’s social gaming world today: Tokyo-based mobile social games juggernaut GREE ($3 billion market cap) just announced it will tie up with China’s biggest web company Tencent ($45 billion market cap), which operates the massive QQ platform.
The plan is to “export” GREE’s social apps to the rapidly growing market for mobile games in China as well as to offer games made in China to GREE’s 22 million Japanese users. The focus of the partnership is on “GREE Platform for Smartphone”, which was announced by the company last year (more info).
Under the agreement, developers following the specifications of the platform will be able to offer games to users of GREE and Tencent. GREE has so far attracted over 200 companies in Japan to join the platform and says that Tencent will help them to localize their games for the Chinese market.
In the official press release, GREE cites a source according to which China had 120 mobile gamers in September last year. To put things into perspective: Japan’s Internet population stands at around 100 million.
GREE CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka announced the move into the Chinese market in summer last year. His company established a US subsidiary just a few days ago and also invested in Singapore-based mobile platform mig33.
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