Japanese service will include localised versions of PopCap's most popular games.
Casual gaming firm PopCap has announced a deal with Taito to launch a social mobile gaming community in Japan called Pop Tower.
It will include localised versions of PopCap games including Bejeweled, Chuzzle and Zuma, with extra RPG elements and social features.
The business model will be to make money from a mixture of virtual item sales and 'premium service options'.
Pop Tower is due to launch early next year on the GREE social networking service, which has more than 21 million members.
PopCap says it has already sold more than one million standalone mobile games in Japan, but hopes to boost revenues by entering the social mobile gaming market, which is huge there.
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"Social games on mobile devices looks set to dominate gaming worldwide and Japan is already ahead of the curve," says PopCap's VP for Asia/Pacific James Gwertzman.
"Our ambition for Pop Tower is to bring the best of PopCap - core game franchises like Bejeweled and Zuma - to Japanese customers; and hopefully make some discoveries about the mobile social space that we can then share with gamers internationally."
It's part of a wider move into social gaming by PopCap, which has included attracting more than four million daily active users for Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook.
