By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
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...
This is probably interesting for anyone reading this: GREE took part in the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco earlier this month (the company also plans a showing at the E3 in Los Angeles in May). At the GDC, GREE International’s SVP Of Product, Ethan Fassett, delivered a...
Facebook reached an important milestone: the company’s Tokyo subsidiary today announced that the number of active Japanese users on Facebook users hit 10 million (active=logged in at least once per month). In other words, 10% of Japan’s web population is actively using Facebook. The...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry