By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
CyberAgent has announced that Ameba, its social networking and blogging platform, hit 20 million users across all related services at the end of last year. Ameba started off as a blogging platform in September 2004 and added various services like Ameba Pigg or Twitter clone Ameba Now over the years...
Tokyo-based mobile contents provider MTI is planning to launch a Mobage and GREE competitor. Dubbed entag!, the mobile social gaming platform is set to start operations on January 11. Not too surprisingly, membership will be free. As Mobage and GREE, entag! will offer a host of casual social games...
Nico Nico Douga, Japan’s answer to YouTube (but with a much stronger social element), is now counting 1.5 million paid members. Dwango’s video service hit the milestone on January 3. Nico Nico Douga hit 21 million users in May last year and reported 1 million paid users on October 13...
Another Japanese triple A video game brand is going social: it took a bit longer than announced last month, but Square Enix started offering Final Fantasy Brigade on Mobage today, a social game based on the super-popular RPG franchise. DeNA actually announced the title first back in October last...
The Nikkei just reported in its online edition that GREE will probably hit US$520 million in sales last quarter (three months through December 31). As if this wasn’t impressive enough, the paper says GREE is expecting operating profit to balloon to US$260 million. If the report turns out to...
Sega has closed down one of the most ambitious mobile social games in Japan, Shenmue City (Shenmue Gai), on Mobage. The game’s developer, Ysnet, actually posted a two-liner thanking players on December 26 on the official homepage of the title. Shenmue City was launched amid much fanfare at...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry