Major Japanese tech blog TechWave is today running a story on how Japan’s social games market has evolved from 2009 to 2010 and how it will grow until 2014.
According to Seed Planning, the market research company behind the analysis, Japan’s social game market grew 305% from 2009 to 2010 (mobile + PC). Further growth is expected to come from the expansion of DeNA (Mobage-town), Mixi and GREE to smartphones and the PC (mainly Yahoo Mobage).
Sales are now worth $1.46 billion, with items accounting for $1.2 billion (rest through ads). Item sales went up 347.6%, ads were up 164.3%.
Seed Planning expects sales to grow 49.3% in 2011 year on year. Groth will slow significantly after that, but by 2014, the firm expects the social gaming market in Japan to be worth $3 billion.
