By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
One key factor for the success of the mobile social gaming business model (and for all mobile content, for that matter) in Japan is that consumers over here can pay for products and services through their cell phones so easily. Now GREE has made it even easier to pay for virtual items and avatar...
Back in January, Mixi announced they will co-launch a social gaming venture with CyberAgent, with both companies having followed up one month later with some additional details. Fast forward to June, and Grenge has just rolled out their first social game. Mogu Mogu Restaurant, a restaurant...
Not many people even in Japan know that Yahoo Japan is running a social network: dubbed Yahoo Days, the social network is embedded in the Yahoo Japan ecosystem of sub-sites and was established in 2006 (its used to be called Yahoo! 360° in the first few months). But now Yahoo Japan announced their...
In many way, social networking in Japan is very much different from social networking in other regions. Mixi, Japan’s largest real identity social network, always had one distinct function: ashi ato, the ability to check which other Mixi user visited one’s profile at which time. This...
Digital Garage subsidiary Wheel has announced a new Twitter application for Android phones distributed through NTT Docomo, Japan’s biggest mobile carrier: Share@ lets users share “decorated movies” with followers on Twitter. The app basically turns still images into movies and...
Last month, CyberAgent subsidiary CyberAgent America has released an iPhone app called FreeAppKing that alerts users whenever certain apps in the App Store become available for free or are discounted or on sale (see here). Now the company has announced that FreeAppKing has hit one million users in...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry