By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Sangokushi Kingdom, a social card battle game (again), racked up a total of 200,000 registered users on GREE. The first-party game was launched on GREE for feature phones in September 2011, when the company was exhibiting at the Tokyo Game Show. In the “historic” social game, players...
As expected, DeNA is striking back in the ongoing lawsuit with GREE: to recap, in November 2011 GREE sued their rival, seeking damages of US$13 million. In the lawsuit, GREE stated that DeNA has been pressuring third-party game developers in Japan into exclusively offering social games...
Today is my last day as staff writer for TechCrunch.com. Thank you to everybody at TechCrunch, first and foremost Michael Arrington (now a venture capitalist), Erick Schonfeld (now editor-in-chief), and John Biggs (editor of TechCrunch Gadgets) for the last four years. I also thank the people at...
I have listed up several stats from several sources trying to size up Japan’s social gaming market in recent months (see below). The Nomura Research Institute says that Japan’s social gaming market will likely be worth 393.5 billion yen (US$5.1 billion) in fiscal 2016, roughly doubling...
I am looking forward to speak at the so-called Startup Asia conference in Singapore next week, organized by Asian technology blog Penn Olson. What’s interesting about the event is that it is highly international, with Japan apparently sending the most foreign attendees (full list). The...
Shin Sengoku Buster, a “historic” social game developed by Tokyo-based social game maker Klab, hit one million users. Klab started offering the game in March last year, first on Mobage for feature phones. Shin Sengoku Buster was ported to smartphones later: just last week, the game...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry