Considering the strong links between Japanese publisher Taito and Japanese mobile tech company DeNA, which made a strategic investment in US social gaming platform OpenFeint in 2009, the announcement that Taito is now using OpenFeint shouldn't come as a huge surprise.

Already integrated in the iPhone version of Space Invaders, and with the updated version of Space Invaders Infinity Gene due to go live on the App Store today, Taito will also be retrospectively fitting OpenFeint to Bust-A-Move and Arkanoid, as well as from scratch for future titles.

"OpenFeint possesses exactly the sort of features we are looking for in an iPhone-based social gaming platform and also benefits from an impressive user base," said Akihito Shoji, senior general manager of Taito's ON!AIR business division.

"We have great expectations for DeNA's strategic investment and look forward to future developments. We've found OpenFeint to be a good match for Taito's iPhone games, providing millions of players worldwide with an additional dimension of fun and enhancing an already solid line-up of titles," he added.

"Taito is a major player in the mobile gaming space," said Jason Citron, founder and CEO of Aurora Feint, the company behind OpenFeint. "Its endorsement of the OpenFeint platform is fantastic and we look forward to a long term partnership."

OpenFeint is now used by over 8.5 million iPhone gamers.