Alibaba to invest in US game maker Kabam

Alibaba confirmed Friday investment of 120 million U.S. dollars in San Francisco-based mobile games producer Kabam.

To increase its mobile games presence , Alibaba will team up with Kabam and publish the latter's mobile games including The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth, and Fast & Furious: The Game.

Previously, Kabam CEO Kevin Chou said the deal with Alibaba would bring resources, infrastructure and distribution to help bring Kabam's games to China and elsewhere in Asia. Sources with Alibaba said the games will be put on its instant messaging app Laiwang and online shopping site Taobao.

Alibaba launched its own mobile game platform in January.

Alibaba is locked in a struggle with Tencent, another major player in China's mobile games sector and both companies hope to transfer their large user bases into popularity for their games -- Alibaba has 255 million active buyers on its shopping sites, while Tencent has more than 300 million users on its instant messaging app WeChat.

China's has more than half a billion internet users and there are many opportunities in the mobile games market, worth 12.5 billion yuan (2 billion U.S. dollars) in the first six months of this year.