As I was assuming, it didn’t take long for DeNA (ngmoco, to be more precise) to finally start Mobage in English on the iOS platform.
ngmoco made a public announcement on March 2 on Mobage’s US Facebook page, and launched the first Mobage-powered iOS titles in the US App Store on March 2, US local time (March 3 in Japan).
The first titles are:
- Ninja Royale (iPhone only)
- Putt Putt Penguin (iPhone and iPad-optimized)
- Blackjack! for Mobage (this iPhone/iPad game was silently launched in Canada and the Philippines last month but is also available in the US App Store)
Quality-wise, Ninja Royale is clearly the best title so far.
What interesting here is that
- neither DeNA nor ngmoco are making a big deal out of this launch (even if it’s not meant to be a full-scale but more of a soft launch)
- only three Mobage iOS titles are available at this point (vs. 23 games when Mobage launched on Android in July 2011)
- just like in the updated Android version, there is no Mobage “platform app” that players need to fire up first before getting to play individual titles (that was the case in the first Android version and is still in the Japanese version of Mobage on iOS)
ngmoco is way more cautious in their approach on iOS than on Android: apparently, the plan for the Apple platform is to release games one by one.
The company still has some time until arch rival GREE launches their globally unified platform in English, probably on iOS and Android at the same time, “between April and June” this year.
