If the harsh words currently being exchanged are anything to go by, there's certainly a healthy competitive spirit between the major mobile social networks.

Speaking as DeNA's Mobage Global rolls out of beta on Android – having initially launched back in July – ngmoco CEO Neil Young has hit back at claims the platform was failing to take off in the west, taking aim in particular at Chinese outfit PapayaMobile.

The firm's head of developer relations Paul Chen had been quick to brand Mobage a failure on Android, citing slow game installs on the platform - some titles reportedly boasting few than 5,000 at the time – before claiming it was failing to gain any kind of traction at all.

This early performance was also highlighted by JP Morgan.

Now, with the likes of Zombie Farm romping into the top 3 in the free game charts amassing between 500,000 and 1 million downloads in the process, Young has told Inside Mobile Apps that Chen's early assessment was needlessly malicious.

It hits the fan

"That criticism is coming from a competing platform with a whole bunch of shitty games," said Young, whose company was acquired by DeNA in back in October 2010.

"What PapayaMobile said was a little bit mean-spirited, whereas my statement about them having shitty games is just fact."

In all, Young claims there are now three Mobage games within Android's top 25 free games chart – Pocket Frogs and ngmoco's own We Rule the other stars – with the company looking to replicate the success Mobage has enjoyed in Japan, where the platform boasts more than 32 million users.

"The beta period allowed us to test, refine and prove the service, assuring a superb user experience with Mobage and our world-class suite of games," he added.

"We now start the process of scaling the service and it is great to already see our games ranking high in the charts."

DeNA recently signed a deal with Grasshopper Manufacture to bolster Mobage's library with additional exclusive games, as the platform prepares to hit iOS before the end of the year.

 

[source: BusinessWire]