Mobage, the enormously popular Japanese mobile social gaming network, has been launched on the Android Market in English-speaking countries around the world.
The gaming platform was known as Mobage-town until it was rebranded earlier this year by owner DeNa ahead of a big western push. In Japan alone it has 30 million users, and VentureBeat reports it brings in $1.3 billion in annual revenue.
DeNa has launched the service with Ngmoco, the mobile studio it acquired for $400 million last October. CEO Neil Young said: "Mobage's release outside Japan marks the next step in our company's global expansion. The opportunity in front of us is to build Mobage into the definitive destination for games and entertainment across territories and mobile operating systems.
"We're tremendously excited about the potential for the platform, both as a great way for players to experience the very best games and for developers to access a global audience easily and effectively."
Ngmoco says 100 games are already in development for the service. For developers, the appeal is an entire audience under one roof, with a single virtual currency across the network and, according to DeNa, average revenue per user that is 30 times higher than on Facebook.
The news comes just days after DeNa announced the Super Creators initiative, which will see some of Japan's most highly respected developers turn their hand to social games.
Keiji Inafune, Yuji Naka and Goichi "Suda51" Suda are among those who will be developing for the service, with Suda51 saying he wants his No More Heroes spinoff to be "the social game with the most blood".