By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
It was a good run for Konami: their mega hit social game Dragon Collection occupied the top spot on the ranking of the most popular titles on GREE for over a year. But Dragon Collection has been pushed down to No. 2 today, and now EA has the bragging rights for the No. 1 game on GREE (among third...
One of the biggest (if not the biggest) third-party social game providers on Mobage, Tokyo-based gloops, announced it now counts 10 million members across all of its titles. That means Gloops is playing in the same league as Konami, which boasts over 11 million social game users (mostly on GREE)...
Social games based on wrestling? They are coming: Fire Pro Wrestling, a video game series that started in Japan in 1989, is getting a social version on Mobage. Maker Spike actually started offering “Fire Pro Wrestling in Mobage” today (the title is available exclusively on Mobage for...
GREE stock has lost over 5% at the Tokyo Stock Exchange today (after the lawsuit against DeNA), but it did better than its rival: DeNA’s stock lost 6.6%, and hit 2,454 yen, the lowest price this year. GREE’s market cap now stands at US$8.3 billion, while that of DeNA amounts to...
GREE today announced it filed a lawsuit against its rival DeNA, seeking damages of at least US$13 million. Lawsuits (both corporate and private) are rare in Japan, but GREE is accusing DeNA of still putting pressure on third-party game developers and other partners to not offer games on GREE but...
The video game industry in Japan is slowly shifting towards the lucrative social games sector, and a new case in point is Samurai Spirits (Samurai Showdown outside Japan). The popular fighting game series started in 1993 on video game platform Neo Geo, and now maker SNK Playmore has rolled out the...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry