By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Tokyo-based social game maker gumi announced it has raised a whopping two billion yen (US$25.7) from a total of six investors today. The fresh money comes from JAFCO, DBJ Capital, Shinsei Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and Tecmo Koei. Gumi says they have now reached a US$154 million post-money...
Major Tokyo-based social game provider (and DeNA partner) gloops has announced the establishment of two offices outside Japan. The company is currently operating some very successful mobile social games on Mobage in Japan. gloops International is located in San Francisco, while the Vietnam office...
One of the biggest third-party social gaming companies in Japan (along Konami, gloops, Klab, etc.) is Tokyo-based gumi. The startup has just posted a pretty unusual and “open” announcement on its website. According to the release, gumi generated a whopping 100 million Yen in virtual...
TechCrunch editor-in-chief Erick Schonfeld spent some days in Tokyo earlier this week for the TechCrunch Tokyo 2011 conference, which I attended and GREE CEO Yoshikazu was invited for as a speaker. Here is an interview with Tanaka that Schonfeld did at the day of the event (this week Tuesday)...
When DeNA announced that Square Enix is planning a social game based on Final Fantasy for Mobage back in October, not too many details were made public. The plan is now to release the game, titled Final Fantasy Brigade, as a beta version in the middle of this month and then push out a full release...
Japan’s biggest real-identity social network Mixi and Twitter Japan have officially announced that partnership that was leaked to the press a few days ago. The goal is to develop new products and advertising services, with Mixi hinting at a function that may make it possible for their users...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry