By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
One of the main reasons DeNA, GREE and (some of) the 400+ third-party social game makers in Japan are raking in as much money as they do is “gacha”, a special element found in almost every social game in this country. I created a quick guide to explain the gacha phenomenon: I)...
Today is a big day for DeNA: after rolling out the awesome-looking Infinity Blade Cross on Mobage for Japanese iPhones, the company just announced the launch of Daum Mobage in South Korea. The partnership with Daum, one of Korea’s biggest web portals, was announced last November. The plan is...
Good news for DeNA: the company just announced the launch of Infinity Blade Cross, the social game version of the iOS super hit. The title, which was announced way back in June last year, is exclusively available on Mobage in the Japanese App Store. DeNA explains: Infinity Blade Cross is a free-to...
DeNA partner Namco Bandai has another hit social game in its portfolio: Idolmaster Cinderella Girls, a “social idol-raising game”, is now boasting over one million users on Mobage. The title, the first social version in the popular Idolmaster video game series, was announced last...
CyberAgent, through its subsidiary CyberAgent Ventures, invested in Vietnam-based smartphone game maker Colorbox (terms of the deal weren’t disclosed). The startup was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City. This is CyberAgent’s second deal with a game maker in a row:...
How long will Japan’s social card battle game boom last? My prediction is that Japanese players will start having enough of this genre in 12-18 months – there are simply too many of these games around, and they all work the same way (see here for my explanation of social card game...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry