By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
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...
GREE stock has been growing rapidly in recent months, and today the company reported some impressive revisions in their earnings estimates for the fiscal year (which, for GREE, ends in June 2012) GREE is now projecting sales to reach US$1.67 billion to US$1.8 billion (that’s up 40-44.4% from...
DeNA issued its financial report for the second quarter of this fiscal year today, and year-on-year, the numbers look pretty good: sales reached US$457 million for the quarter (which ended on September 30), which translates to a 28% plus year-on-year. Operating income hit US$203 million (+13%). The...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry