By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Update: The app returned early Sunday morning Japanese time. Monster Strike, the current top mobile game in Japan in terms of sales, has disappeared from the Japanese App Store today (Saturday Japan time). It wasn’t operator Mixi (2121) that pulled the app, but it seems that Apple just...
Canceled games, ousted star designers, exposed (bad) work conditions: Konami (9766) has not really been producing good news since it announced restructuring efforts around spring this year. And in about two weeks, starting from September 10, Konami Digital Entertainment will close a total of 31...
Monster Strike continues to print money for maker Mixi (2121). According to the latest financial report released by the company, the mega hit game pulled in a whopping US$378 million in sales between April 1st and June 30th. In other words, Monster Strike made Mixi US$4.2 million per day in that...
A total of three times in the past I was given the opportunity by Singapore-based mover and shaker Bernard Leong to speak with him about various tech-related topics in his podcast series “Analyse Asia”. As the name suggests, the focus of the interviews is on the Asian region, and I...
The Casual Games Association was kind enough to give me the opportunity to speak at Casual Connect 2015 next week. Casual Connect will take place from August 11-13 in San Francisco this year, with several thousand attendees expected. My lecture with the topic “Cracking Japan: How Foreign...
Update: Venturebeat has learned directly from GREE International COO Andrew Sheppard that around 30% (not 2/3) of the employees in the SF office were laid off. GREE International, the wholly owned US subsidiary operated by Japanese mobile gaming powerhouse GREE (3632), has apparently laid of 2/3 of...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry