Got Game: Japan's NTT Docomo to Launch 'D Game' Portal Tomorrow with China Mobile

Japan’s NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) is buddying up with another giant telco, China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941), to bring its mobile gaming portal to an overseas market for the first time ever. Starting from tomorrow, Docomo’s ‘D Game’ portal, which launched in Tokyo last fall, will launch within China Mobile’s own app store.

Dubbed the China Mobile Market, it’s one of China’s largest third-party app stores (see it here), focusing on Android and feature phone apps and games. The arrival of the D Game portal for China Mobile’s 700 million subscribers will be good news for Japanese developers who publish via Docomo’s platform. An initial 20 titles will launch tomorrow on D Game China [1], from studios like Capcom, Konami, and Square Enix. Its catalog will expand over time.

China Mobile’s app store does support paid apps – via carrier billing, of course – but it’s not clear if the D Game titles will be paid ones. Docomo’s announcement today points out its involvement with Dentsu and NTT Advertising in a Chinese joint-venture called D2C, so it’s likely that the games will monetize via in-game ads.

D Game is part of Docomo’s recent push into content and mobile commerce, along with companion services dubbed dmenu and dmarket [2]. The latter one got a big boost recently with Docomo’s acquisition of a women’s fashion e-commerce site.

China Mobile has just [over 100 million 3G subscribers](Dentsu and NTT Advertising in Japan. Dis), so it has a fairly large smartphone user-base, who are the ones most likely to be keen to snap up Android games.