GREE Partners with Korea’s Mobicle on Smartphone Game Development

GREE - Tokyo Game Show 2011

Japanese mobile gaming company GREE (TYO:3632) has announced today that it will acquire shares of Korea’s Mobicle, and will cooperate the company in smartphone game development. While not specified in the announcement, reports indicate that GREE picked up 224,178 shares, amounting to 6.8 percent voting rights, of Mobicle. According to GREE’s own statement, it will work with Mobicle to “co-develop” social games for smartphones, taking advantage of the the Korean game developer’s expertise in “real-time simultaneous connections.”

GREE says that the games will be first released in Japan, and then some of those titles will be translated into other languages and launched in other regions. Given that Japanese gaming tastes can be a little – shall we say – different, I followed up with GREE who explained that some titles will also be developed and launched in specific regions as well. We hopes this means more games tailor made for the audiences they reach.

GREE previously partnered with SK Telecom to set up shop in the latter’s T-Store, and it has also established a subsidiary, GREE Korea, Inc, in Seoul.

A recent report from Nikkei estimated that GREE’s sales earnings for the last quarter could hit about $520 million.