By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
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...
Growth in Japan’s social gaming market is starting to slow down, competition is increasing, and internationalization isn’t going as well as expected. So what can you do as a mobile game platform provider? While Mobage operator DeNA continues to do m-commerce and started branching out...
As a Japanese game developer, how do you stand out of the crowd of thousands of titles available on Mobage, GREE, iOS and Android? A lot of companies over here, especially the ones with deep pockets, have answered this question with “by using popular IP” in recent years. That IP has...
GREE has entered a partnership with social game maker AltPlus under which the two companies have set up a joint venture in Tokyo on March 14. The background here is that all of AltPlus’ games so far are being distributed via GREE at the moment (full list here). Not too surprisingly, the new company...
This isn’t directly related to games, but it’s an area that I am personally looking at very closely for my clients and something I think is worth sharing: Ameba operator and social game maker CyberAgent released a new report on the status quo and future of Japan’s smartphone ad...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry