By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
It has become quiet about Yahoo-Mobage, the PC-based social gaming platform Yahoo Japan (the country’s biggest website) and DeNA launched in October 2010, in recent months. But now Yahoo Japan, on its company blog, says that the platform has reached the 7 million registered user mark. It took...
Tokyo-based gumi, one of the biggest 3rd party social game makers in Japan (and a GREE investee), is ready to go global, it seems. The company has appointed Masaru Ohnogi as the senior executive manager for its foreign business segment. Ohnogi launched gaming company Grest America in the US in 2010...
I am a bit late on this, but the newest deal DeNA has inked with a Chinese partner is probably the biggest to date in that country: SINA, the company behind Weibo.com (China’s largest microblogging platform), will soon drive Chinese users to Mobage. DeNA explains: As part of the partnership, DeNA...
It’s not only about “protecting” younger players and e-mail reminders when users hit a certain payment cap: GREE also announced a number of countermeasures against “real money trading”, a phenomenon that came to light when users started auctioning off rare virtual...
The gacha-gambling phenomenon, technical glitches, off-platform virtual item trading: Japan’s social gaming giants DeNA and GREE are probably not amused by recent reports in Japanese media, which triggered a discussion whether regulatory measures by the Japanese government are imminent. The...
Legendary video game developer SNK is bringing “SNK Dream Battle” to GREE later this month (pre-registration started already), a title that makes use of IP from the company’s various fighting game series. However, SNK Dream Battle isn’t a fighting but a social card battle...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry