Japan's Mobage and Mixi mobile game platforms join forces

Newsbrief: Tokyo's social gaming giant DeNA has struck up a business alliance with web-based social network Mixi, by which each company's development platform will be combined at the beginning of 2013. From January 2013, studios looking to release games via DeNA's Mobage social game network and Mixi's own smartphone platform will be able to distribute them via a single platform, as both companies will share the same game development platform. However, social graphs for the two companies will remain separate. Mixi currently has 8 million monthly active smartphone users in Japan, while DeNA's Mobage has more than 45 million registered users in total.