By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
One big trend in Japan’s social gaming industry is that local video game makers, from smaller developers to listed companies, are starting to produce more and more social games for GREE, DeNA, and Mixi. Japanese business daily The Nikkei recently investigated how successful three major video...
With over 45 million units sold on various gaming platforms, Resident Evil (Biohazard) is one of the biggest video game franchises in history. In April, maker Capcom announced Biohazard Outbreak Survive, the first social version of the adventure/horror title, for GREE on Japanese feature phones...
CyberAgent is counting 8 million users in its virtual world Ameba Pigg (latest stat available, for June 12), and the company is now stepping up efforts to add more and more features to it. Apart from linking social games from the company’s catalog to Ameba Pigg, another way is to integrate...
CyberAgent has announced it started offering its hit game Twinkle Bar on Mixi Touch (the smartphone browser version of Mixi) and Ameba Mobile. The title, a bar management simulation, has racked up 2 million users on Mixi Mobile (Mixi on feature phones) in about a year. On Ameba Mobile (Ameba on...
GREE has announced its line-up of Unity-powered iOS and Android social games for this summer (in Japan). In March this year, GREE partnered up with the 3D games tool development maker to make the Unity plug-in part of the GREE SDK. Personally, I am a big fan of what Unity is doing (Gamasutra just...
I will be in the US (namely San Francisco and LA) for a few days next month to visit various companies and do other things. By coincidence, the JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization) will be holding an interesting event during that time, on July 29, in San Francisco: Social Networks and Casual...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry