Japanese social gaming company DeNA will open a wholly-owned subsidiary DeNA Studios Canada in Vancouver this month. The company said it is opening the office to optimise its “cross-border capability in developing and operating first-party mobile social games.”

The Vancouver studio will work on game design and development as well as providing operational support for other DeNA Group companies. DeNA plans to raise CAD600,000 (US$600,000) as initial funding for the studio.

DeNA Studios Canada will be headed up by Irfan Virk, the CEO of DeNA’s California subsidiary Gameview Studios, which the Japanese company acquired in 2010. Much of DeNA Studios Canada’s work will be supporting Gameview.

“DeNA anticipates the new studio will meaningfully contribute to augmenting the whole group’s game development and operating capabilities,” said Virk in a statement.

DeNA makes the Mobage social gaming platform which has more than 1,800 smartphone, feature phone and PC game titles and more than 35 million users in Japan. The company is currently expanding its presence in China, Europe, South Korea and the US.