By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Yahoo Japan (4689), the country’s biggest online company, is entering the smartphone game publishing business. The news started making the rounds over here after this recruitment page went online, where the company is looking for game producers, designers, planners, and a whole range of other...
“GxYz”, the joint venture GREE (3632) and Yahoo Japan established back in February this year, has released its first game. “Driland – Devil King Army vs. Men Of Valor” (a rough translation of the title) is a spin off of social card battler Driland (aka Doliland), GREE’s...
I have mentioned it multiple times in the past: the App Store and Google Play will see a flood of made-in-Japan card battle games in the next few weeks and months. Rage Of Bahamut, Dragon Collection, Deity Wars, Driland, or Dark Summoner were just the beginning. Now Tokyo-based (and listed) social...
This is a pretty smart move: GREE announced that they will establish a wholly owned subsidiary that will do nothing but create and sell physical goods based on their social games. Dubbed “GREE Entertainment Products” (tentative), the new company is set to start operations next month. It...
Gacha, the biggest money-making mechanic in Japan’s social gaming industry, is about to get transformed radically. A sub-form of this electronic draw concept, “kompu gacha” (or “complete gacha”), was regulated by the Japanese government a few weeks ago. The kompu gacha...
I summarized my personal prediction on both GREE‘s and DeNA‘s chances of becoming the leading platform providers for mobile social games in the US (and globally) back in March. I was actually pessimistic in September 2011 already. In fact, I was pessimistic since I first started...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry