By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has issued a cease and desist order to DeNA, following claims in December last year that DeNA was breaking the country’s antitrust law. The JFTC states: DeNA forced “Specified Social Game Developers” not to provide the games through “GREE”, by...
GREE has rolled out a native application for Monster Planet, its hit monster breeding game, for iOS. The game is basically the same as the feature phone version, but MonPla on the iPhone looks just much, much better. The title is only available in the Japanese App Store (download) at this point...
DeNA has announced they have partnered up with Tokyo-based anime production company Aniplex to bring social games based on anime titles from the Aniplex catalog to Mobage users. The first title to be turned into a Mobage game is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, an anime series that’s based...
What does GREE CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka think about his company and Japan’s chances of a recovery after the triple disasters that hit this country on March 11? NHK World recently aired an interview with Tanaka (in English), and you can watch it here (sorry, it’s not embeddable). He’s...
Yahoo Japan, the country’s biggest website, and major convenience store chain Lawson have signed a deal under which the companies will promote each other’s products and services. First, Lawson will establish a virtual shopping mall selling many of their own products plus items listed on...
CyberAgent continues its South East Asian investment spree: through subsidiary CyberAgent Ventures the company acquired a 20% stake in Vietnam’s top Internet search advertising agency Clever Advertising. Further details of the deal weren’t disclosed. CyberAgent says that 30% of...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry