By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
First Zynga Japan shuts down 2 social games on Mixi, then Playfish/EA does the same with Restaurant City, and now it’s RockYou Asia‘s turn: American social game makers are having a hard time in Japan (hint: don’t come here if you don’t have anything unique to offer). And...
And yet another games studio gets snatched up by DeNA: today, DeNA announced it plans to acquire Punch Entertainment, a Hanoi-based game studio that’s owned by a Palo-Alto based company of the same name (website). Until now, the American HQ was responsible for design, art, engineering and QA...
I had the opportunity to speak at the so-called Tofu Project x Open Network Lab Day earlier this week in Tokyo. Approximately 150 people came to the event, which was sponsored by seed accelerator Open Network Lab and JP Morgan Japan. If you missed the event, here is a video of me speaking about...
If you still needed proof that Kaito Royale, the No. 1 title on Mobage, is Japan’s biggest social game (over 10 million registered users), here’s another hint: as probably the first social game in the world, Kaito Royale will be turned into a TV series. As in the game, there will be...
Konami has announced the user base of their social games across GREE and DeNA‘s Mobage has passed the 10 million mark at the end of last month. Their biggest hit is Dragon Collection, a social collectible card game, that is close to occupying the No. 1 spot on GREE for an entire year straight...
CyberAgent yesterday announced it has set up the so-called “International Mobile Marketing Division” that aims at providing “overseas companies with smartphone and mobile promotion opportunities in Japan”. The devil is in the details, but given that this country is a black...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry