By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
It’s an old wisdom in the video game industry: platforms go nowhere without so-called “killer” titles. Mobage in English on Android has a few solid titles (that do well), but that killer game is missing. In the US, ngmoco is working on a bunch of new, original and Mobage exclusive...
Big win for GREE today: Capcom and GREE jointly announced a social game from the super-popular fantasy game series Monster Hunter, which has sold over 19 million units so far. “Monhan Tankenki Maboroshi no Shima” will be released by the end of this year, simultaneously for GREE on...
I have the feeling GREE plans to cover the entire world with offices: the company just announced it will open an office in Dubai. The presence in the Arab Emirates will stand in line with GREE offices in Beijing, California, Seoul, Singapore, London, Amsterdam and Sao Paolo. I don’t get it...
DeNA has announced an interesting move to enter Korea today: Mobage Korea will be established in the gaming- and mobile-crazy nation via Daum, one of the country’s biggest web portals (yes, portals are still popular in Asia). The deal was done through DeNA Seoul, a subsidiary DeNA set up in...
How have ARPU and sales of DeNA and GREE changed over the last months? Japanese blog “Shares” has created two handy charts that show how these metrics developed from 2008, and I translated them below. This chart shows the ARPU for DeNA (Mobage) and GREE between 2008 and today. If this...
Recently IPO’d social gaming company Klab announced that Captain Tsubasa, a soccer-themed social game, has hit the 1.5 million user mark. The title is part of a bigger trend in Japan, namely using famous anime and manga brands as a thematic and graphic background for social games. In the case...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry