By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
In February this year, Sega announced it has teamed up with Aiming, a Tokyo-based developer, to develop mobile games aimed at the global market. At the same time, the two companies unveiled their first co-developed title, “MO Action Shooting” game Towa No Tsurugi (more here). Fast forward to June...
Japan’s top smartphone game Puzzle & Dragons has passed the 14 million user mark (in Japan only), maker GungHo (3765) said today. The RPG/puzzle hybrid actually hit the new number on May 18, just 20 days after reaching 13 million users on April 28. In other words, GungHo was able to add a...
It has become very, very silent about comm, the chat app DeNA started rolling out in October last year. According to the last official word from the Mobage operator, a few months ago, the app racked up a total of 5 million users. That number is sure higher now (comm has been advertised on TV in...
Japan’s top messenger app LINE (160 million users worldwide and counting) is taking it very slow with its in-app gaming platform. Even though the first LINE-powered titles were rolled out in summer last year, the total number of such games available is still below 30. LINE Corp. CEO Morikawa...
Tokyo-based MM Research Institute has released a few interesting stats on the Japanese market for tablets I thought are interesting to share (phones aren’t the only mobile devices people over here use to play games, after all). According to the company, total tablet shipments in fiscal 2012...
“Line Play”, the virtual world NHN Japan released in Japan back in November 2012 and that integrates with chat app LINE on smartphones, is now offering games. The first title is called “Tsuri Tomo”, hit LINE Play on Friday, and is currently available in Japanese only (the LINE-powered...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry