By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
I tried talking quite a few social gaming companies from the US and other places out of entering the Japanese market in recent months, simply because they didn’t have unique, defendable IP or other strong selling points for their games. Now even the biggest social gaming company of them all...
Both GREE and DeNA are adding games to their platforms on a daily basis, but almost all of these titles are either feature phone exclusive or released for use on those handsets first. Consequently, GREE and Mobage on smartphones currently have just a few dozens games on offer – on feature...
Update: Reuters just added a more in-depth report on their visit to DeNA (well worth the read). It’s not really a detailed report, but according to Reuters, DeNA is ready to release the long-awaited English version of Mobage on smartphones worldwide (excluding China) this month. New CEO Isao...
It seems DeNA wants even more anime-based social games for Mobage: the company just announced a partnership with Tatsunoko Production, a major anime production company based out of Tokyo. Tatsunoko has been producing anime for decades, including Speed Racer, Robotech, Honeybee Hutch, Gatchaman...
GREE has announced yet another port of a hit game from a major Japanese console game maker: this time, it’s Square Enix, which started offering Chaos Rings Lite on GREE for the iPhone. The RPG was released as a standalone app on the iPhone last year and reached the No. 1 position in a total...
Japan’s e-commerce juggernaut Rakuten is active in a number of verticals, and one of them is real estate. And now Rakuten has expanded its offering on the Rakuten Real Estate sub-site drastically. First and foremost, Rakuten Real Estate has three times more condos and houses on offer than...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry