By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Following a disappointing financial report, Japanese video game maker Cave announced it will focus more on social games going forward. The company has an 18-year old history and is especially famous for its shoot’em ups aimed at a hardcore gamer audience (personally, I am a big fan)...
While some of the big European and American game companies have expressed skepticism about Web3 gaming, scaled down ambitions or adopted a wait-and-see approach, things are very much different in Japan. (In that context, Japan is actually similar to South Korea (or Asia in general), but I will...
Tokyo-based market research firm Yano has published a new report on Japan’s smartphone game industry. According to the company, the size of the industry is stagnating from 2014 to 2017 within the US$8-8.5 billion band: The numbers include sales generated inside smartphone native apps as well...
As everybody reading this text will know by now, Nintendo (7974) announced Super Mario Run for iOS earlier this week. Co-developed with partner DeNA (2432), the app is supposed to go live this December. Estimate Of Future Number Of Total Super Mario Run Downloads As Nintendo’s first actual...
What I learned is that many people in the social gaming industry outside Japan don’t know that GREE and Mobage operator DeNA have actually been running multiple platforms in Japan over the last few years, not just one. Apart from Yahoo Mobage on the PC, these are GREE and Mobage on: Japanese...
Nobody can be really surprised about this, but I myself have been wondering why Japan’s big telcos keep refusing to enter the country’s big social gaming market for years, especially as all three are aggressively moving from data and voice to content sales. But today the local mobile...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry