By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
The Casual Games Association was kind enough to give me the opportunity to speak at Casual Connect 2015 next week. Casual Connect will take place from August 11-13 in San Francisco this year, with several thousand attendees expected. My lecture with the topic “Cracking Japan: How Foreign...
Update: Venturebeat has learned directly from GREE International COO Andrew Sheppard that around 30% (not 2/3) of the employees in the SF office were laid off. GREE International, the wholly owned US subsidiary operated by Japanese mobile gaming powerhouse GREE (3632), has apparently laid of 2/3 of...
I was given the opportunity to speak at Casual Connect Asia 2015 in Singapore back in May, covering (no surprise) the Japanese mobile gaming market during my 20-minute lecture. The title of the lecture is “Demystifying Japan: What Pitfalls And Chances Does The World’s Biggest Mobile...
GameBank released Orbit Saga in Japan today, a 3D action RPG for smart devices. It’s the first app released by the developer set up in January this year by Yahoo Japan (4689), the country’s biggest online company (see my previous Gamebank posts). Orbit Saga is trying to blend typical mobile...
Kadokawa Dwango released a new report on the status quo of the Japanese game industry today. According to the so-called “Famitsu Game White Paper 2015” (by Japan’s biggest video game magazine Famitsu), the domestic market for gaming grew 4% year-on-year to US$9.6 billion in 2014. For...
Almost 3.5 years after launch, Puzzle & Dragons is still going strong in Japan, generating over US$100 million in sales per month and having crossed 36 million downloads domestically on May 15. Maker GungHo Online Entertainment (3765) has been doing its best to keep the game alive in recent...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry