By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
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...
GREE, DeNA‘s Mobage, Yahoo Mobage, Mixi, Hangame: there’s certainly no shortage of social game platform providers in Japan, and the same is true for social game content providers (I am estimating there are around 500 of these active in this country). But who is actually playing these...
As predicted, Capcom’s “Monhan Tankenki Maboroshi no Shima”, a social game based on the company’s action RPG series Monster Hunter, continues to do well on GREE. The title was announced last month, launched on GREE on December 19, quickly shot up to No. 4 on the ranking of the most...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry