By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
I put together the following article for Social Casino Intelligence, the biggest publication covering the global social casino industry. The link to the online version of the original piece is here. The US$5 billion social gaming market in Japan is unique in many ways, but one of the most striking...
The crazy Puzzle & Dragons boom in Japan continues – and it gets even crazier. Maker GungHo posted a new financial document according to which sales in February for the company reached an almost unbelievable 10 billion yen in February (+1,280% year-on-year). That is US$106 million –...
After having established a mobile social gaming platform called “dgame” in Japan, the country’s top carrier Docomo is now ready to bring it to China. dgame went live in Japan in December last year on smartphones and feature phones (through the browser). Back then already, Docomo...
This is big: Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank (the one that acquired Sprint in the US) will launch a tender offer to increase its stake in GungHo Online Entertainment between April 1 and 26 this year (GungHo will conduct a 10-for-1 share split on April 1). GungHo has produced Puzzle &...
In Japan, a title called “Kaito Royale” is often credited with having kick-started the social gaming boom in this country as a whole. The first-party game – which works much like Mafia Wars – from DeNA was launched on Mobage in October 2009, and is still very, very popular...
GREE continues to step on the gas: after securing a number of promising games, announcing a partnership with Yahoo, and expanding its merchandising business, the company today said it entered a joint venture with Ameba operator CyberAgent. This is remarkable, as a) CyberAgent is a top provider of...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry