There are industry reports from a number of Japan-based investment banks available out there, and everyone sees the market size of the domestic social gaming market differently. For analysts, investors, and everyone else interested in such data, one alternative is the analysis from Enterbrain, a Tokyo-based magazine publisher (whose most important asset is Japan’s biggest video game magazine Famitsu).
Enterbrain recently released the so-called “Social Game User White Paper 2011” (Japanese only), and in an excerpt, the company says that the market for social games in Japan has grown 4.4 times from 2009 to 2010 (from US$324 million to US$1.45 billion).
This is for revenue of social games in Japan as a whole, generated by DeNA (Mobage), GREE, Mixi, Hangame, and all third par game developers in the country (there are about 500 of them).
The number for market size for 2010 is very close to the one Tokyo-based market research firm Seed Planning released about a year ago.
Enterbrain says the US$1.45 billion in sales for social games in Japan in 2010 accounts for about a third of all online game-related revenue in the country in that year:
