GREE mobile gaming platform enters open beta, plans two new Moshi Monsters games

Tokyo-based mobile gaming company GREE announced today the open beta launch of its social network tool suite for iOS and Android devices.

GREE’s existing Japanese platform, which reaches 230 million players worldwide, provides developers a plethora of social features for their mobile titles, such as leaderboards, Achievements, and a friend invite/request infrastructure.

In April 2011, GREE acquired social platform OpenFeint for $104 million. In early May 2012, it bought San Francisco, Calif.-based developer Funzio for $210 million. Both purchases signified GREE’s move for a stronger international presence.

“The GREE platform has been built with the goal of creating a worldwide developer and player community,” GREE senior vice president of product Ethan Fassett said in a statement. “We believe the GREE platform offers developers the tools to deliver unique and customized games to an engaged, global player base. We are looking forward to seeing the adoption of these new mobile-social features and helping innovate the mobile games space.”

GREE plans a bilingual English and Japanese launch of its platform in over 60 games by September 2012.

London-based developer Mind Candy also announced the upcoming release of two new Moshi Monster titles using GREE’s platform in the last quarter of 2012. The kid-friendly monster-collecting game touts more than 60 million registered users since its April 2008 release.

“Our fans love tablets and smartphones, so we’re really excited to take our much loved characters and stories to these platforms,” Mind Candy founder Michael Smith said. “GREE has achieved phenomenal success, and we’re looking forward to working with them on these two games.”