Konami today announced it was partnering with GREE to launch Dragon Collection exclusively on GREE’s new platform for iOS.

Dragon Collection is Konami’s social mobile card battling game that originally came out in Japan. Since launching, the game’s racked up 7 million domestic registered users and won awards including Japan Game Awards: 2011 Future Division from the Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association.

The game is a card-battling game where players travel through a fantasy world on a search for legendary “Dragon Cards.” The North American version will feature all new monsters designed for this build of the game, but will also include all the gameplay modes from the original game. There are a total of four gameplay modes: Quest (where players openly explore the game world), Battle (players battle both villains and rival players), Card Pack (players compete amongst each other for random in-game prizes) and Enhance (where players merge monsters to create stronger ones).

Dragon Collection also contains a number of social features: Aside from being able to forge alliances with friends and/or battle against rivals,  players will also benefit from having more friends in the game. Players can earn points by “cheering” other players on and helping them defeat powerful enemies.

Card-battling games are immensely popular in Japan and are proving incredibly lucrative here in North America, too. Titles like DeNA’s Rage of Bahamut (as of right now, the No. 4 top grossing app in iTunes) and Blood Brothers are regularly topping the top-grossing app and top-grossing free app lists on both both iTunes and Google Play. Based on GREE’s massive user audience (thanks in large part to its acquisition of OpenFeint in April 2011), it’s not surprising that Konami would publish a card-battling game on that platform.

Dragon Collection is currently available on the iTunes App Store and will come to Android later this year.