NTT Docomo subscription service offers Angry Birds with premium in-game items that regenerate each month

NTT Docomo has done something really interesting with the Angry Birds franchise. The wireless carrier, Japan’s largest, offers a subscription-based lifestyle service called “Sugotoku-contents” that gives users access to everything from news and weather to horoscopes and games—and it recently started including Angry Birds.

More specifically, Sugotoku-contents subscribers now have access to Angry Birds, Bad Piggies, and Angry Birds Space, as well as the first season of the animated series, Angry Birds Toons.

Now you might be wondering, why offer a free game on a paid service? That’s because the Sugotoku version of Angry Birds is giving subscribers exclusive in-game power-up items that refill on a monthly basis—for free. The first month will see users getting 700 yen ($6.80) worth of items, while the following months will reward them with slightly less: 600 yen ($5.85) worth of items.

(See: Heroes of the Storm may be heading for paid beta, and Chinese gamers want in)

Considering Sugotoku-contents costs just $4 a month, that’s a pretty good deal. More importantly, it opens up a new monetization route for freemium mobile games.

Imagine being able to subscribe to Puzzle & Dragons and getting free gashapon rolls each month, instead of having to buy them at exorbitant individual prices. A subscription-based monetization system for mobile games would certainly wreck the current ecosystem—you won’t have success stories like Gungho any more—but it is definitely a viable, and possibly more stable route for indie mobile game developers.

What do you think?