By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Mixi has released the financial report for the second quarter of fiscal 2011 (July to September), and in a nutshell, things aren’t looking too good for Japan’s biggest social network: while sales have slightly (1.8%) risen to US$39.66 million, operating profit fell 16.8% to US$6.54...
Mixi has announced it acquired Kanagawa-based smartphone development company Conit for an undisclosed sum. Conit, which was established in 2008, started making games for various platforms (iOS, GREE, Mobage, etc.) before moving towards B2B products, i.e. smartphone billing solutions. The company...
GREE has announced it will buy MARS, a Tokyo-based smartphone development company, this month. MARS spin-off venture FEYNMAN, which offers a billing solution for smartphone apps, will be part of the deal, too. GREE says it hopes to ” to strengthen its development capability for smartphone...
Among the big Japanese web companies, Cyberagent is the most aggressive one when it comes to investing in startups in Japan and abroad (via CyberAgent Ventures). Now GREE also says it will set up a wholly-owned subsidiary, GREE Ventures, that will invest in web (not only gaming) startups worldwide...
GREE has been strangely quiet on their expansion plans in the US after the company bought Openfeint back in April for US$104 million. To date, not one GREE 1st-party game has been localized for non-Japanese markets, for example (to be fair, there are only about ten, and some of them aren’t...
I can’t say I am surprised: DeNA today announced they will form a joint venture with Grasshopper Manufacture, the maker of games like No More Heroes, Shadows Of The Damned, Killer 7, or Lollipop Chainsaw. The joint venture company, provisionally named “Grasshopper Social Network...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry